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Thursday, February 24, 2022

02/24 Links Pt2: For Israel, victory gives us a future; Keyboard Warrior; UN nominates ‘Israel apartheid’ activist to be Palestine rapporteur

From Ian:

For Israel, victory gives us a future
We are so loathe to hit the enemy hard enough to break its will to continue fighting and cause it to surrender that we run with indecent haste to the negotiating table pushing for a ceasefire, and take minimal and insufficient military steps towards the defeat of our genocidal enemies.

The result is they continue to believe that although we are by far technologically and militarily superior, we do not have the stomach for a fight. They believe that we have internalized the Western paradigm that war is always the last option with as few casualties as possible, leaving the enemy proudly standing to fight another day.

If Israel goes into a war against its enemies with the mentality that we lose even when we win, then we will never truly be victorious. Every tactic will just be seen through the prism of how much or little we can lose.

Instead, Israel needs to return to a victory mentality. The mentality that led us to victories in the War of Independence and the Six Day War. There were unbearable casualties in these wars, but they were stunning victories, and our soldiers fought gallantly, overturning strong odds.

Our leaders knew that there would be losses, but they could not be overly distracted by them if they were going to win. Victory ensured there were not even greater losses, far more bloodshed.

Victory and loss can not be compared. Our historic victories are what kept the Jewish nation intact and strong. If we would have been defeated one time, our presence here would be tenuous, and our enemies would be constantly circling, waiting for the moment to deliver the final blow.

Victory is what has held them at bay.

The victorious gains a vanquished enemy, deterrence, and safety and security for its people.

For Israel, victory gives us a future.
From Brooklyn Housewife to Zionist Lobbyist
“Irish, sympathetic, hates British, will definitely help.” So read an entry in the diary of Brooklyn housewife Esther Kaplan, after meeting with Rep. John J. Rooney, an Irish-American congressman from New York City, seventy-five years ago this week.

Mrs. Kaplan had no background in lobbying or political activism, but when her son David was arrested by the British for trying to smuggle Holocaust survivors into Palestine in 1947, she reinvented herself as a Zionist lobbyist and took her case straight to Capitol Hill.

The arrest of David Kaplan and other crew members of the S.S. Ben Hecht, and the protests that ensued in the United States, comprise a fascinating but little-known chapter in the history of the campaign by Americans to help create the State of Israel.

On a chilly morning in late February 1947, six hundred Holocaust survivors trudged up the gangplank of the S.S. Ben Hecht in the French harbor of Port de Bouc. The ship was sponsored by the activist Bergson Group, and named in honor of the journalist and Hollywood screenwriter who authored the group’s most controversial newspaper ads denouncing British rule in Palestine.

The ship’s captain was Robert Levitan, a burly six-foot-four former Merchant Marine who said he “jumped at the chance” to participate in the mission because he had “felt impotent in the 1930s and early 1940s, hearing about Hitler’s persecution of the Jews and not being able to do anything about it.”

The scene at the Bergson Group’s New York headquarters as would-be crew members of the S.S. Ben Hecht signed up to be interviewed.

“We had twenty men, with twenty different reasons for joining up,” Levitan remembered. “We had some very young boys who were reared in Zionistic homes and were gung-ho Zionists. We had an Irishman who hated the British, and he volunteered just because it was against the British. Our cook was a black man, one of the gentlest men you could ever meet, and he just liked helping out the underdog.”
Keyboard Warrior
It was a remote place to pick for a high-level strategy meeting. In late 2016, a group of activists made their way to a building on an industrial estate in west London, climbed a staircase to the second floor, and seated themselves around a few tables.

The group was a Who’s Who of the anti-Israel movement in the BDS capital of the world. Just a few months before the centenary of the Balfour Declaration — and mere miles from where British foreign secretary Arthur Balfour had written his historic letter of support for Zionism — the activists were planning to mark the occasion with a new offensive against Israel.

All except one of the assembled. Despite his kaffiyeh, BDS badges, and regular appearances on London’s pro-Palestinian scenes, “John” Collier was not all he seemed.

That’s because his real name was David, he was actually a pro-Israel investigative blogger, and he was wired up with recording devices to share details of the meeting with the world.

“I sat next to one of the key figures in the movement talking about strategy,” recalls David Collier from the comfort of his North London home, “and suddenly it occurred to me that here I was in the belly of the beast, and that if they found out, I would be in real trouble.”

Six years later, with Amnesty International — a UK heavyweight in the anti-Israel world — releasing a report accusing Israel of apartheid, Collier connects the dots between that meeting and London’s status as BDS capital of the world.

The gathering at the industrial estate was just one of a steady stream of stories about the anti-Israel scene that Collier reported. His painstakingly researched investigations lit the fuse on the scandal of Corbynite anti-Semitism that blew up in 2018, contributing to the Labour Party leader’s downfall the following year.

But as the Amnesty report shows, Britain’s anti-Israel scene is as viciously effervescent as ever. Coming just three years after Jeremy Corbyn’s close brush with power, it raises the question of why one of the most historically tolerant of countries has become a central hub of bigotry.


Amb. Dore Gold: Why Israel Refuses to Cooperate with the UN Commission of Inquiry
On Feb. 24, 2022, Amb. Dore Gold, President of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, wrote an open letter to the Chair of the UN Human Rights Council's Commission of Inquiry, Navi Pillay, in support of Israel's refusal to cooperate with the Commission, after previous UN Human Rights Council investigations displayed a clear bias and hostile predisposition towards Israel.

Gold wrote: The UN Human Rights Council should have been an ally of Israel. As a state, we emerged in the aftermath of the Holocaust, the worst war crime in human history. It comes as no surprise that many of the founders of the human rights movement came from Jewish origins. Sullying the Jewish people as a whole flies in the face of what we have represented since the Second World War and feeds into the regeneration of the anti-Semitism that we are witnessing in recent decades.

We cannot cooperate with a UN initiative that is so deeply flawed in an area which we hold so closely to our own self-definition. It is for this reason that both the Jewish state and the Jewish NGOs will not stand for the process you have undertaken.


UN Watch: UN nominates ‘Israel apartheid’ activist to be Palestine rapporteur
A radical pro-Palestinian advocate who routinely calls Israel an “apartheid” state and equates Palestinian suffering with the Nazi Holocaust has been nominated by the UN’s top human rights body for a 6-year term as its Special Rapporteur on Palestine, a position with an unchanged mandate dating from February 1993 to investigate only “Israel’s violations of the principles and bases of international law.”

The decision to nominate Francesca Albanese, a lawyer and former UNRWA official, was announced in a letter published today by Federico Villegas, Argentina’s ambassador in Geneva who this year heads the 47-nation Human Rights Council.

Albanese has repeatedly accused Israel of “apartheid,” “genocide” and “war-crimes.” She said the Jewish state’s response to Hamas rocket attacks on Israeli civilians was “horrific” and “immoral,” and she organized and hosted events on “Israeli apartheid.”

In 2019, Albanese addressed an event organized by the Hamas-linked organization PRC.

“The president’s decision to nominate a radical activist that is so prejudiced against and politically opposed to Israel constitutes a gross violation of the council’s own rules, as set forth in resolutions that require impartiality and objectivity in the selection and appointment of mandate-holders,” said Hillel Neuer, executive director of UN Watch, a Swiss-based non-governmental organization that monitors the world body.

“Francesca Albanese completely fails even the minimal standards of impartiality and objectivity, because this is an individual who has quite simply devoted her life to militant advocacy against Israel, as even a fleeting glance at her social media and public statements reveals. She’s the very opposite of impartial.”

Neuer noted that there were other applicants for the UN post who had “far more objective and impressive credentials, yet who were rejected for purely political reasons.”

“Appointing Francesca Albanese to be an impartial and objective investigator of Israel would be like appointing Vladimir Putin to be an impartial and objective investigator of Ukraine. Albanese hates Israel with a passion, and doesn’t really hide it. She calls it an evil, racist and colonialist state. This nomination is absurd, and a travesty of justice,” said Neuer.


Will the BBC again avoid the issue of a controversial UNHRC special rapporteur?
In that same interview with ‘the Palestine Chronicle’ Francesca P Albanese gave her view on the subject of terrorism.

“Indeed, I fully agree that terrorism is ongoing in the oPt, as Amira Hass denounced in her last piece: where defenseless civilians are exposed to the fear and brutality of masked Israeli soldiers raiding Palestinian homes and villages, often in the middle of the night; where there is a complete lack of accountability for the frequent loss of civilian lives, unjustified demolitions of Palestinian houses; confiscation of civilian structures and livelihood, including to shepherds and farmers; the torching of century-old orchards and olive trees; the countless daily humiliations Palestinians are exposed to under the yoke of the occupation. In this respect, I agree that practices amounting to terrorism in the oPt must be investigated and those responsible prosecuted.”

While Ms Albanese’s appointment has yet to be confirmed by the UN Human Rights Council, her agenda – and that of the body proposing her for the post – is already amply clear.

It is however once again highly unlikely that BBC audiences will be provided with any information concerning the views and political agenda of the apparently incoming “Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967” either before or after the BBC uncritically promotes ‘what the United Nations says’ to its audiences.
AFP Silences Israeli Ambassador Gilad Erdan
Agence France Presse falsely reports today that Israeli Ambassador to the United Nations Gilad Erdan failed to respond to the Palestinian representative’s vilification of Israel as an “apartheid” state during the Security Council’s monthly meeting on the Middle East yesterday. In fact, Erdan directly refuted Riyad Mansour’s assault on the Jewish state’s legitimacy. Today’s story, “At UN, Palestinians call on Israel to end ‘apartheid,” errs:
In his own address, Israeli ambassador to the UN, Gilad Erdan, did not address the Palestinian’s accusations, but rather chose to direct attention towards Hamas, exhorting the council to recognize the group as a “radical terror organization” for “deliberately targeting civilian populations all in the name of advancing the destruction of the State of Israel.”

The misreporting also appears in AFP’s French and Arabic coverage.

Contrary to AFP reporting, following his remarks about Hamas atrocities, Israeli Ambassador Gilad Erdan rebutted at length the “apartheid” smear, although he did not repeat the word. After addressing Hamas’ terrorism, Amb. Erdan refuted the “absurd claims and heinous accusations” put forward in the joint delegitimization campaign taken up by both the Palestinian Authority and groups like Amnesty International (from one hour, 44 minutes into the video.) Amb. Erdan directly addressed the Palestinian’s apartheid charge, stating:
But a quick glance at the diverse state of Israel is more than enough to show how unfounded these accusations are. Can anyone honestly look me in the eye and tell me that Israel, a country that protects the social and political equality of all of its citizens, is guilty of systematic injustice? A country in which Arab doctors, Arab members of parliament and Arab ministers serve alongside their Jewish counterparts. Can any decent person justifiably associate Israel with this most horrific form of discrimination?

Just this week, Khaled Kabub, a Muslim judge, was elected in Israel to the Israeli Supreme Court while an Israeli Arab member of our parliament was appointed as Israel’s council general to Shanghai. The delusional reports have the audacity to ignore the facts, focus on the fabrications and echo a narrative of lies promoted by the terror organizations and the corrupt Palestinian Authority just to single out and delegitimize Israel as a Jewish state.

Fortunately, this time, moral and like-minded democratic countries have condemned these egregious reports while the only ones who commended them are terror groups and the Palestinian observer who referenced them today.
Amnesty International’s report on Israel doesn’t matter - opinion
Israel was created as the only country on earth that would have a Jewish majority. That is not an outlier. Christianity is the official religion and the Church of England is the state church of the United Kingdom. Sunni Islam is the only permitted religion in Saudi Arabia. So why pick on Israel?

If AI’s end game is to eradicate the one Jewish country, they arrived too late. If their goal is to advance a two-state solution, even that train has left the station. Time has marched on, and the future of Judea and Samaria will not be determined by apartheid name-calling or even by the old issues on the table. With 800,000 Jews currently living in east Jerusalem and throughout the rest of Judea and Samaria, it now is impracticable to unring that bell.

Israel barely managed to uproot and resettle the 8,600 Jews she evicted from Gush Katif in 2005. A hundred times that many? No amount of diplomacy, strategizing, theorizing or negotiating can dislocate nearly a million Jewish homeowners and lessees, and find new homes for them in a country the size of New Jersey, the size Israel would be without Judea and Samaria.

Oh, and by the way, Israel presently suffers from a massive housing shortage as is. If AI has any ideas for solving that one, we are all ears. Perhaps, Abu Mazen’s Palestine Authority would allow Jews to buy homes there?
Debunking Another Anti-Israel Myth: Jewish Self-Determination Is Not a ‘Colonial’ Enterprise
Despite Amnesty’s claim that Israel is an apartheid state, the country was ranked above Italy, Spain, and the United States in a respected global index of democratic values. The latest edition of the annual Democracy Index from the prestigious Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) gave Israel 7.97 points out of a maximum of ten, just behind France (7.99 points) and Britain (8.1 points).

The results prove that Israel is by far the most democratic country in the Middle East.

Unlike European settler-colonial powers, Israel is a democracy that extends rights and protections to all its citizens — Jews and non-Jews alike. Israel is a country where Arabs serve as Supreme Court Justices, fighter pilots, Members of Knesset, artists, and athletes.

Everything that Jewish Israelis do, Arab Israelis do too.

Moreover, the Israeli government is actively encouraging and facilitating the fuller integration of Arabs into a diverse society.

In October 2021, the Israeli government passed two wide-ranging plans to allocate over $10 billion to enhance the development of Arab communities. Arab mayors, parliamentarians, civil society organizations, and government officials of all backgrounds have worked on the proposal intensively over the past several months.

By uncritically perpetuating the Jewish Israeli-as-settler-colonialist myth, major media outlets (see here, here, here, and here) are making it possible for anti-Zionists to cloak their rejection of the Jewish state in the language of “human rights” or “social justice.”

One notable example was when supermodel Bella Hadid last May posted to her Instagram account, which has 42 million followers, a series of cartoons referring to Israelis as “occupiers” and Palestinians as the “oppressed.” In one cartoon, a woman tells her friend: “There is no ‘fighting’. There is only Israeli colonization, ethnic cleansing, military occupation and apartheid.”

By not calling out the sustained campaign to demean and isolate the world’s only Jewish state, news outlets are effectively turning a blind eye to chronic Palestinian rejectionism and thus making it more difficult to resolve the conflict.

All this occurs, mind you, as antisemitism is reaching levels that should concern every objective observer.
Israel: If Human Rights Organizations Cared about Human Rights They Would Focus on PA and Hamas
Israel's Ambassador to the UN Gilad Erdan told the UN Security Council on Wednesday that this would have been the sixth birthday of Ido Avigal, an Israeli boy killed by a Hamas rocket in May. He charged that the UN Human Rights Council's new Commission of Inquiry "is ignoring Hamas' crimes...even though Hamas' sole purpose was to harm Israeli citizens, which led to the death of Ido."

"Can anyone honestly look me in the eye and tell me that Israel, a country that protects the social and political equality of all of its citizens, is guilty of systematic injustice - a country in which Arab doctors, Arab members of parliament and Arab ministers serve alongside their Jewish counterparts?"

"Look at how the Palestinian Authority and Hamas treat political dissidents, minorities, women, and the LGBTQ community....Where are the humanitarian organizations decrying the PA's pay-to-slay policy?"
Egypt’s El-Sisi Has Taken a ‘Strategic Decision to Deepen Ties With Israel’
Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi has taken a “strategic decision to deepen ties with Israel,” a report in Globes has said in recent days.

The report said Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi is “striving to deepen economic and commercial ties,” adding, “This new approach can be attributed, among other things, to the major success of the Abraham Accords, which have helped promote economic deals signed between the Israel and Egypt themselves, and private companies from the two countries.”

A second factor listed by the report is Egypt’s need for Israeli assistance with the US administration, “which is pressing Cairo on human rights.”

Meanwhile, the energy sector has been over the past decade “one of the areas in which deals between Israel and Egypt have flourished,” said the report, stating that pipelines “have been laid and sales agreements signed and also implemented. Now, as part of the new approach that Al-Sisi has adopted, these deals have been expanded to include Jordan.”

According to Globes, Chevron, which has a near 40 percent stake in Israel’s offshore Leviathan gas field and a 25 percent stake in the Tamar gas field, signed a deal with Jordanian gas pipeline company Fajr for conveying gas from Leviathan and Tamar to Jordan through Israel, and then south to Egypt via the Jordanian Red Sea city of Aqaba under the Red Sea.
‘I’ve never had an each way bet on Israel’
Interview with Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison.

You spoke to Israeli PM Naftali Bennett overnight. What did you discuss?
Naftali reached out, he wanted first of all to say ‘thank you’ to Australia and my government for the position we’ve taken on Hamas, and Hezbollah prior to that. I met with Naftali when I was in Glasgow last year and he renewed his invitation for me and Jenny to come [to Israel], which we’d love to do obviously. I’ve been looking to come to Israel for some time now, but events in Australia have kept me here, but it was very nice of him to repeat that invitation. And I extended the same invitation to have him here in Australia.

Other than the United States, Israel has no greater friend [than Australia] anywhere in the world. We will be always consistent about that. And he’s very appreciative of that and the very strong position we’ve always taken, [for example] in the UN, where I’ve ensured that Australia’s position has been fully reversed and moving from abstain to reject on those usual motions that are put up every year.

And that hasn’t gone unnoticed over time. I remember once at the UN some years ago, one of the marks of respect that is made by various missions to the UN is who comes along to your nation’s address and there was a full contingent there from Israel, which I greatly appreciated, because the relationship goes back a long way, well before I ever entered politics. I’ve never had an each-way bet on Israel.

One of the other areas that Naftali and I often talked about – we didn’t get the chance last night, but have on other occasions – is the technology partnerships, both on energy, on water and a range of other advanced financial technologies. This is an area where we see great cooperation. So, it’s not a one-dimensional relationship about security. It’s a multi-dimensional relationship where we have a lot to learn and a lot to gain.

We also spoke about Ukraine yesterday as you’d expect as topic of conversation with all that is at the moment, and we’ll stay in close contact on those issues with Israel.


Palestine activist Huwaida Arraf running for Congress
Now running for Congress in Michigan: a Hebrew-speaking Palestinian Christian who is married to a Jew and spent time living on an Israeli kibbutz before rejecting coexistence efforts in favor of advocating for Palestinian resistance.

The onetime organizer of the International Solidarity Movement, a pro-Palestinian group that recognizes the right to “legitimate armed struggle” against the Israeli occupation, Huwaida Arraf has alarmed Detroit-area Jewish and pro-Israel groups with her plans to enter a crowded Democratic field ahead in the August 2022 primary in Michigan’s 10th Congressional District.

Rabbi Asher Lopatin, executive director of the Michigan-based Jewish Community Relations Council of the American Jewish Committee, called Arraf’s past statements about Israel “hateful, destructive and antisemitic.”

For her part, Arraf has condemned antisemitism in pro-Palestinian advocacy and says she encourages Jews to approach her with any questions and not to believe everything they read about her.

“Know that I will always stand for people’s rights,” she said. “And when we come together to defend the rights of all people — not really based on ethnicity or religion — we will find ourselves on the same side.”

Her positions on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, however, are well beyond the consensus of even most Jewish left-of-center groups, which consider terms like “genocide” to describe the conflict not only inaccurate but antisemitic.
UK Art Gallery Director Asked to Step Down After Controversy Over Exhibit With Anti-Israel Claims
The director of the UK’s Whitworth and Manchester Art Gallery is being asked to step down by the University of Manchester, which runs the gallery, following a controversy last summer surrounding an exhibit that included an anti-Israel statement, The Guardian reported on Tuesday.

The July 2021 exhibit “Cloud Studies,” by the research agency Forensic Architecture, displayed a statement at the entrance expressing solidarity with the Palestinian “liberation struggle” against Israel and accusing the Jewish state of practicing apartheid, ethnic cleansing and occupation. Following complaints from UK Lawyers For Israel (UKLFI), which also released a note pointing out misrepresentations in the statement, it was removed by the gallery.

Forensic Architecture then demanded the exhibit’s closure while its founder, British-Israeli professor Eyal Weizman, expressed concerns about artistic freedoms. Pro-Palestinian groups also protested outside Whitworth and more than 1,000 complaint letters were sent to the gallery. In response, Alistair Hudson, who was appointed director of the gallery in 2018, reopened the exhibit and again displayed the controversial opening statement while also agreeing to display a statement by the Manchester Jewish Community.

UKLFI Director Caroline Turner said on Wednesday that Hudson had “assured the vice chancellor of Manchester University that they had established the accuracy and legalities of the work presented” in the exhibition. However, when UKLFI submitted a Freedom of Information request to the university for details about steps taken to assess the accuracy of the exhibit’s allegations and to comply with public sector equality law, the school responded saying that “no recorded information is held relevant to the specific points raised in your request.”

In September 2021, UKLFI wrote to the university and suggested that it “should consider appropriate disciplinary action against Mr. Hudson based on the fact that he had assured the Vice Chancellor that they had established the accuracy and legalities of the work presented but the Freedom of Information request showed that no such investigation had been made.”
Guardian doesn't let the mere absence of evidence ruin a good narrative
The university initially agreed to remove the “introductory statement”. However they backed down after FA demanded that the exhibition must close if their statement was removed. The University then added a statement by the Manchester Jewish Community posted outside the exhibition, before adding another statement by a pro-Palestinian organisation as well.

Moreover, the headline (“Whitworth gallery director Alistair Hudson forced out over Palestinian statement”) and text would likely lead Guardian readers with the misleading, if not completely false, impression that Hudson was “forced out” due to the pro-Palestinian message in the FA exhibition, or due to pressure from UKLFI, or a combination of both.

In fact, it’s not even clear if he was asked to leave, as, according to an article today in The Times,”the university declined to confirm last night if it had sought his resignation”, and Hudson himself neither confirmed or denied his departure. If he was asked to leave, it could be due to the fact that, as UKLFI noted, “he had lied to the Vice Chancellor when he assured her that they had established the accuracy and legalities of the work presented”.

There’s quite a bit that’s not yet known about Hudson’s departure, yet the Guardian decided, regardless of the unanswered questions, to peddle their readers’ favourite narrative about the ‘Israel lobby’ stifling pro-Palestinian views in the UK.
HonestReporting Initiative Prompts Dutch MP to Submit Questions to Parliament About Antisemitic Actions of Pro-Palestinian Org
A Dutch lawmaker has submitted parliamentary questions concerning The Rights Forum, a group with apparent links to EU-designated Palestinian terror organizations, which had requested that 14 publicly-funded schools in the Netherlands hand over “documents or information about the institutional ties… [they may maintain] with Israeli universities, institutions and companies, as well as organizations that propagate support for the State of Israel.”

HonestReporting, as part of an ongoing effort to hold The Rights Forum accountable, on February 17 called on Dutch authorities to launch a probe into the group.

The Rights Forum campaigns in support of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, and previously lobbied for the release from jail of senior Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) member Khalida Jarrar, who was most recently arrested in 2019 following a terror attack that killed 17-year-old Israeli Rina Shnerb.

The Rights Forum made its controversial inquiry request — known as a Wob — based on the Netherlands’ 1991 freedom of information law. However, Dutch law does not require that all freedom of information requests be fulfilled. Indeed, the Netherlands Enterprise Agency, part of the Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs, advises that in “some cases your [freedom of information] request may be rejected, for instance for security reasons or if it concerns confidential data related to people or companies. Public authorities may refuse a request for information which is manifestly unreasonable.”


What’s The New York Times Hiding?
In other words, The Times does not know and has not checked whether the dubious U.N. claims are true. Nor does it have any intention of doing so. CAMERA requested the ages, locations, date and circumstances, and as of this writing, has yet to receive this information from The Times.

If the U.N. data on fatalities is baseless and can’t be substantiated, then what about its data for injured Palestinians? Indeed, what other pieces of information in the article were not properly fact-checked and perhaps require clarification, further eroding the article’s premise about rising settler violence and failure to prosecute settlers for attacks against Palestinians?

Separately, The Times this week covered Calcalist‘s crumbling “investigation,” that is reporting by the Israeli business journal which, without producing a shred of evidence, levelled the explosive —and completely unsourced — charge that Israeli police employed advanced technology from Israeli cyber firm NSO Group to illegally spy on large numbers of Israelis, among them protest leaders, civil servants, business figures and those connected to former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s corruption trial (“Israel Police Says Didn’t Hack Civilians Without Court Approval“).

About that now largely refuted report, The Times quoted Israeli investigative journalist Mordechai Gilat who wrote: “What was published was not a journalistic investigation, nor a cousin of a journalistic investigation, nor even a distant relative.”

In his Haaretz Op-Ed, Galit further slammed the Calcalist for reporting unverified claims as fact:
And I thought innocently that the paper’s journalists conducted a comprehensive investigation and already revealed the truth. I was wrong. I never imaged that the paper wouldn’t do this before publication. I never imagined that it would leave the real journalistic work to others.

Like the Calcalist, The New York Times published first and never investigated, leaving CAMERA with the real journalistic work of fact-checking. In November, CAMERA Arabic uncovered that Kingsley’s supposedly bridge-building literature professor was in reality a fulcrum of hatred in the classroom. Now, CAMERA actively pursues the veracity of the U.N. data, as The Times runs hard and fast in the opposite direction, affirming, “we are not pursuing the individuals’ names.”

Is The Times afraid that once again Kingsley’s story won’t check out?
The NYT, the BBC, the Jews, and Anti-Somethingism
As 2021 came to a close, two of the most influential news organizations in the English-speaking world, the New York Times and the BBC, slipped, flipped, and fell flat on their faces in their coverage of Jews.

At first glance, the respective fiascos seem dissimilar. The offending New York Times piece was a heartwarming report on a Gaza poetry professor who defies his conditions, and even his own feelings, to encourage empathy for Israeli Jews. The BBC’s blunder was in an article about Jews attacked in the streets of London.

The fatal flaw in the Times story was redressed with an epic editors’ note that retracted the article’s core premise. BBC News, by contrast, had clung for as long as possible to the view that there was no problem, even as British Jewish leaders decried a “colossal error” on the part of the broadcaster.

Notwithstanding those differences, though, each story follows a similar theme about Jews, Arabs, the conflict between them. Above all else, they tell us about bad habits in media coverage of antisemitism, and how the journalistic impulse to make news fit a pre-determined narrative can so often lead to the defamation of Jews.

Both stories deal with characters who have attacked Jews in one way or another. The BBC piece focuses squarely on the attack, during which young Jews celebrating Chanukkah were harassed, driven from the busy London shopping street, and compelled to take shelter on their tour bus. The article describes video footage of men spitting at the bus, making Nazi salutes, and waving shoes—with the latter act characterized as “an insult in some countries,” a hint at the apparent Middle Eastern background of the attackers.
Chirstian leaders are blind to their own anti-Jewish bias
The leader of the Presbyterian Church USA Rev. J. Herbert Nelson, II accused Israel last month of instituting "21st-century slavery". He hasn't aired similar accusations against any other country, including those that still practice slavery. Follow Ynetnews on Facebook and Twitter

In November, the Swedish synod (a senior church council) endorsed launching an investigation into the State of Israel, the only democracy in the Middle East, claiming it was an "apartheid state", and the United Church of Canada is preparing to do the same soon.

The synod did not hurl similar accusations against any other country, including countries in the Middle East where Muslim Arabs, let alone Christians and other minorities, enjoy far fewer civil rights than in Israel.

Shortly before the onset of the pandemic, the World Council of Churches (WCC) issued a condemnation of Israel's "violence" after Greek Orthodox Archbishop Atallah Hanna alleged he was "poisoned" in an "assassination" attempt by the Jewish state.

Almost two years have passed, and not a single shred of evidence has been presented to support Hannah's claim, who is notorious for calling for the annihilation of the State of Israel and labeling Zionism a "racist terrorist movement" and that the Israeli government a "bunch of money changers in the Temple" who seek to "rule the world."

In December, the patriarchs and heads of the major churches in Jerusalem issued a statement regarding "the threat to the Christian presence in the Holy Land."
Growing schism on ecumenical committee over Presbyterian antisemitism
Leaders within the PCUSA began moves to engage in the Boycott Divestment Sanctions (BDS) movement in 2004. In June of 2014, the PCUSA passed a vote by a narrow margin (310 to 303) to divest $21 million from three companies doing business with Israel: Caterpillar, Hewlett-Packard and Motorola Solutions.

Nekrutman also cited a congregational study guide published in January of 2014 by the Israel/Palestine Mission Network of the PCUSA entitled “Zionism Unsettled.” The study guide was supposed to foster a deeper understanding toward bringing peace, reconciliation and justice to the homeland that Palestinians and Israelis share.

But the guide viewed Zionism as the source of evil that leads to ethnic cleansing and cultural genocide, Nekrutman said.

“Most Jews view Israel as a theological entity,” Nekrutman added. “For this reason, anti-Israel sentiment can certainly become antisemitism.”

Nekrutman stressed that not all PCUSA leaders agree with the denomination’s stance on Israel, but said that “as long as a vocal segment of PCUSA continues to view Israel as solely a geopolitical entity without any theological validation combined with viewing the world via an exclusively Social Gospel paradigm, the denomination will continue to nurture antisemitism.”

Nekrutman explained that this is already happening with some branches of Chrisitian leadership incorporating this form of antisemitism into their policy.

“Reverend J. Herbert Nelson holds a degree from Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary, an educational institution that aims to identify and dismantle systems of oppression. It is part of a movement that has consistently viewed Israel as the Goliath and the Palestinians as the David,” Nekrutman said. “When a denomination continues to spew a false narrative about Israel to its members and at the same time completely exonerates and excuses the Palestinian leadership of any wrongdoing, how does a pastor reared in these teachings think otherwise? His statements demonized Israel and employed a double standard.”
Kentucky Rabbi Stands Up to Anti-Israel Pastor, and a Jew Is Shot in Broad Daylight
A would-be assassin arrived at the campaign headquarters of Craig Greenberg, a Democrat running for mayor in Louisville, Kentucky, and tried to kill him.

Luckily, the shooter, a 21-year-old man named Quintez Brown — who was a prominent Black Lives Matter activist — missed his target and ran away after the February 14 attack. He was apprehended by the police, arrested, and charged with attempted murder.

Two days later, activists from BLM posted his bond of $100,000, and sprung him from jail. During subsequent scrutiny of Brown’s social media accounts, Rabbi Shlomo Litvin, chairman of the Kentucky Jewish Council, discovered that Brown had retweeted an image portraying Robert Kraft, the Jewish owner of the New England Patriots, as a “plantation master.” Brown had also posted a tweet suggesting Jewish money ran politics in Kentucky, and an image touting the ideology of the Black Hebrew Israelites, an organization listed by the ADL as one that has promoted antisemitism.

Given Brown’s antisemitic proclivities, it shouldn’t be much of a surprise that he attempted to murder a Jewish politician in cold blood. Jew-hatred is part and parcel of some strong segments of the BLM movement.

One person who should draw a lesson from Greenberg’s attempted murder is Rev. J. Herbert Nelson, the Stated Clerk of the Presbyterian Church USA (PCUSA). Nelson recently declared Israel guilty of “21st century slavery,” and portrayed American Jews as being complicit in this crime against humanity. He did this in a statement issued on Martin Luther King Day in January, and has since doubled down on his hatred.

Nelson works on his wavelength, and Brown works on his, but they broadcast the same message: Jews own slaves.
Author and activist Ben M. Freeman on why looking at history is vital in tackling antisemitism
On the most recent episode of Podcast Against Antisemitism, Ben M. Freeman, an author, activist and educator, spoke about the importance of having a basic understanding of history and why it is vital in tackling antisemitism.

Speaking on his passion for studying history, Mr Freeman told our host that “I was always able to view history from a bird’s-eye perspective, and I don’t know why that is…it’s just the way my mind works. So, for me, that means I’m able to spot patterns.

“That’s why I can look at Paul [the Apostle], and then Marx, and then things that were said later on, things that are said today, and then draw a connection.”

Mr Freeman said that looking at common themes between historical events can better explain the events behind antisemitic incidents and “tell us why”. “So much of the commentary on Jew-hatred is just commentary, it’s just people describing what happened. ‘This person said this, that person said this,’ and for me, we have to get to the ‘why’, and the ‘why’ is not going to be answered in 2022, it’s going to be answered looking back in history to thousands of years ago.”

When asked where he would recommend people who may not know a lot about antisemitism to start in their fight against anti-Jewish racism, Mr Freeman explained how a basic understanding of common antisemitic tropes can be used to build a deeper framework of knowledge, explaining that it was for this reason that he outlined these often-used tropes in his book, Jewish Pride: Rebuilding a People.

“In chapter one, I break it down into economic libel, blood libel, conspiracy fantasy and the racial libel. Then, if you kind of understand those basic ideas, look into history. Look at how we’re perceived. Look at how we have been treated. Look at narratives that have come about that you might not even be aware are about Jews.”
'Violated by vile hatred,' Sarasota galvanizes against hate following antisemitic acts targeting Jewish residents
Upset and angry over the distribution of antisemitic flyers in Sarasota last week, the local community came together on Sunday afternoon in a show of unity against hate.

Jewish Sarasota residents Alice D'Souza and Susan Skovronek, both 83, were among several hundred community members who attended the unity gathering organized by The Jewish Federation of Sarasota-Manatee at Bayfront park on Sunday to denounce the acts of hatred last week.

They attended the rally representing the Woman's Interfaith Network of Sarasota, a group of about 50 women from different faiths and backgrounds, along with D'Souza's granddaughter Gwendolyn.

Hundreds of residents woke up on Feb. 11 to find antisemitic flyers methodically folded and placed in bags filled with rice that had been placed on their gardens.

"It's an insult," Skovronek said. "The ignorance of the people who are antisemitic — they weren't born that way, they were educated that way by family and friends."
Two Kentucky lawmakers apologize for use of the phrase ‘Jew them down’
The first lawmaker used “Jew them down” in an attempt at a joke. The second lawmaker repeated it and then corrected himself: “That ain’t the right word to use.”

Both Kentucky lawmakers ended up apologizing for a phrase that persists in the 21st-century American lexicon, despite repeated pleas from Jewish organizations to kill it off. One even said he grew up with the phrase.

The Lexington Herald-Leader reported that the phrase came up Tuesday during a hearing in the Kentucky General Assembly, when a government official reported the state had leased two properties from a private company for $1 each for use following recent devastating storms.

State Sen. Rick Girdler, a Republican who chairs the Capital Projects and Bond Oversight Committee, asked if there were any questions.

State Rep. Walker Thomas, also a Republican, marveled at the $1 figure, and wondered, laughing, if the state could “Jew them down on the price.”

“We got a representative up here who [wants to] see if you can Jew ’em down a little bit on the price,” Girdler said. “That ain’t the right word to use,” Girdler continued. “Drop ’em down, I guess.”

Both representatives soon apologized. Thomas explained that the phrase was second nature.
How Israel's Covid Diplomacy Is Helping the World
Israel is on the front lines of responding to the coronavirus pandemic across the globe. Israel's unique ability to deal with emergency situations, improvise, and respond quickly and flexibly have all factored into its success. There is a core Jewish value that teaches us that we must help those in need during difficult times. It is therefore natural that Israel has gone to great lengths to support its friends in the international community.

Israel's Ministry of Foreign Affairs has been at the forefront of efforts to donate masks, respirators, and other essential medical equipment to countless countries. When India was ravaged by a severe wave of coronavirus in April 2021, Israel sent entire planeloads filled with respirators and medical aid. When Romania was grappling with a crisis in November, we sent a team of five top medical experts to share Israel's experience in its hospitals. In Ghana, the Israeli embassy distributed masks to local medical teams. Israel has also committed to donate over a million vaccine doses to African nations.

Hundreds of kilograms of PPE gear, syringes, medications, and more has been sent to medical staff in 52 countries, including Kenya, Peru, and Bulgaria. The ministry's agency for international cooperation - Mashav - has also brought medical staff and administrators from Tanzania, Rwanda, Guatemala, and many others to Israel for world-class learning. IsraAID, a leading NGO, just finished a six-month project in Eswatini, where an Israeli team set up an operations center for distributing vaccines and training medical staff.
The History of Jewish Life in America | The Jewish Story | Unpacked
Jews have lived in the United States since 1654 — before the states were even united — when twenty-three Sephardic settlers fled to New Amsterdam. Today, the Jewish population of America stands at 7.5 million.

Overcoming brutal sweatshop conditions, assimilationist pressure, antisemitic regulations and even lynchings, American Jews have helped positively shift the country’s politics and economics. Though they weren’t always welcomed with open arms, and despite the challenges they have faced over time, American Jews have flourished in what is now home to the world’s second largest community of Jews.


Book review – Protocols: Exposing Modern Antisemitism
Reviewing: “Protocols: Exposing Modern Antisemitism” by Elder of Ziyon. EoZPress. 2022. English. Paperback. 365 pages. ISBN-13: 979-8985708431. In the song National Brotherhood Week, Tom Lehrer sang that “the Protestants hate the Catholics, the Catholics hate the Protestants, the Hindus hate the Muslims, and everybody hates the Jews.” Nothing demonstrates that more than the world’s obsession with Israel. That is often manifest in the United Nations preoccupation and obsession with Israel, excluding almost everything else. Such that organizations like UN Watch are needed to advocate for Israel.

While UN Watch is headed by the well-known Hillel Neuer, another valuable advocate for Israel is headed by a mystery man known as the Elder of Ziyon (EoZ), who runs a blog of the same name. Blogging since 2004, EoZ has long advocated for Israel and the Jews in a world that often wants neither.

Those who follow the EoZ blog know that numerous times weekly, he debunks lies about Israel from media across the globe. When Israel has been under rocket attacks, EoZ has been at the forefront of promoting Israel’s side in a world where Hamas is seen as freedom fighters. Even if they use children as slave labor to build terror tunnels, infants as human shields, and more.

EoZ takes his name from the infamous antisemitic The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, first published in Russia 120 years ago. It has been the source of the lie that the Jews are an organized group to dominate the world. In Protocols: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (EoZPress), EoZ has written an invaluable guide that showcases his investigative writing and brilliant analysis of the full-court anti-Israel press.

In the introduction, EoZ writes that we have updated versions of the protocols today. They might not take the same written form as the older forgery, but they are imprinted on the brains of modern antisemites. These protocols include ideas such as the Jewish lobby controls the American government; Israel ethnically cleanses non-Jews from Israel; Zionism is racism; Israel violates international law in myriad ways, and Jews use the Holocaust to justify their own Nazi-like crimes, and more. In some circles, these new protocols have practically become a religion, and the people who believe the new lies are as fanatic as the ones who believe the old.






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