Saturday, March 05, 2022

03/05 Links: Jewish Ukraine Fights Nazi Russia; Bennett concludes meeting with Putin, speaks with Zelensky; The Future of the Democrats and the Mainstreaming of Antisemitism

From Ian:

Jewish Ukraine Fights Nazi Russia
The Russian bombardment of the Kyiv television tower, which is located near the Babyn Yar memorial, was reported to have hit a part of the ravine inadvertently. The television tower stands right above the killing fields, overlooking the location of the memorial. There was no attack on the memorial complex itself, but the symbolism was hard to ignore. Zelensky called on world Jewry to “wake up to the threats posed by Russia’s invasion,” adding that “Nazism is always born in silence.” A translation of his speech into Hebrew was soon uploaded to the presidential Facebook page. The statement had as much to do with geopolitics as it did with his personal identity—Ukrainians have become frustrated over the past week with what they see as Israeli diplomatic equivocation, regardless of the evident needs of Israeli security, which must take into account the Russian military presence in Syria.

Zelensky had never seemed to me, including the one time that I discussed the issue with him over dinner, to be particularly comfortable with deploying or inhabiting his Jewish background in public. Despite the fact that Ukrainians enjoy pointing out his national success as an indication of a lack of antisemitism in the country—and the fact that his Jewishness was not a liability during the 2019 presidential campaign—it felt to me like his uncertainty about his identity would prove an awkward and evident tension. But now here he is, effortlessly deploying it for the greater good of the state. Zelensky is doubling down on his Jewish heritage, at the same time that he represents a sort of postmodern version of Pinocchio, stepping out of the television set and into the real world, where he has become a real boy.

Cometh the hour, cometh the man. Zelensky received a staggering 73% of the vote in the second round of the election in 2019. At the time, many outside analysts and observers viewed that tally as a manifestation of the capacity of television to create an illusory reality—in this case, a modern populist communicator naming an actual political party, Servant of the People, after the name of his television show. But reality has proved more personal, more contingent, than that analysis. The heroism that Zelensky has demonstrated in the past few weeks is a refraction of the resilience, cohesion in times of crisis, and other traits of the ordinary Ukrainian. Back in the comparatively peaceful days of 2019, three-quarters of the Ukrainian population took a look at Zelensky, and through some sort of heuristic that I cannot understand, let alone describe, saw a manifestation of their best qualities. And they were right. What is democracy, if not that?

Over dinner the night before his election victory, I impertinently joked to Zelensky that he would have to improve his English if he was to become a real Davos man. The joke was very much on me—and on all of us.

Glory to Ukraine! And glory to Zelensky, the bravest Jew on earth!


Bennett concludes meeting with Putin, speaks with Zelensky
Prime Minister Naftali Bennett flew to Berlin immediately after meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow for three hours on Saturday, in an apparent attempt to negotiate an end to the war in Ukraine.

Bennett was set to meet with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz. The two leaders met in Jerusalem on Wednesday.

Earlier, Bennett and Putin discussed the war in Ukraine, including the situation of Israelis and Jewish communities as a result of the conflict, a diplomatic source said.

Bennett informed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in advance of the meeting with Putin, and called him before departing Moscow.

The prime minister has twice spoken with Putin and Zelensky previously, since Russia invaded Ukraine.

Zelensky has asked Bennett to try to mediate between the sides, an offer that Putin rebuffed last year, but did not reject last week when Bennett brought it up again.

Bennett coordinated his trip to Moscow in advance with the US, France and Germany – all parties to the Iran talks. Bennett spoke with French President Emmanuel Macron and may visit Paris after Berlin, KAN reported. Turkey was also updated, as Bennett’s flight route was over its territory.

In addition, Putin and Bennett discussed the Iran talks, with the latter emphasizing that Israel opposes a return to the 2015 nuclear deal, which is the aim of the negotiations in Vienna.
David Horovitz: AnalysisWith trip to Kremlin, Bennett flies Israel into the eye of the Russia-Ukraine storm
That Bennett, Israel’s first Orthodox prime minister, flew to Moscow on the Shabbat underlined his conviction that his mission has the potential to save lives — and thus to take precedence, in accordance with Jewish religious law, over Sabbath observance. The open question is whether he can indeed somehow contribute to a restraining of Russia’s military activity, and an earlier and less bloody conclusion to the war.

If Bennett’s mission leads nowhere, and worse, if he incurs the further displeasure of the free world’s most popular head of state, the prime minister may come to conclude he should have stayed home this Shabbat. Already, his insistence on attempting the almost impossible — trying to maintain not neutral but warm relations with both sides in a war — is threatening to exasperate the US and has the potential to deeply harm Israel’s standing in the free world.

If he somehow brokers life-saving progress, by contrast, he will have performed a remarkable service.

Putin has repeatedly insisted he intends to demilitarize and “denazify” Ukraine, while also demanding it not join NATO. Ten days into his invasion, he has ratcheted up his rhetoric in the past few hours — warning that any countries tempted to establish a no-fly zone would be considered enemy combatants, comparing the mounting sanctions to a declaration of war, and telling Ukraine’s leaders they “risk the future of Ukrainian statehood” if they continue to resist him.

In short, Vladimir Putin is not sounding like a man with an eye on compromise. Will Israel’s prime minister — delivering messages from the West while trying to bring his own added value — be able to change that?
With the world in crisis, Israel steps up - analysis
Think about that for a minute and use it as a measuring stick to gauge how things have changed regarding Israel and the Mideast: The US turned to Israel to lobby the UAE to vote with it in the UN.

Israel now is a serious world player. With that, however, comes serious responsibility.

A mediator’s role is not always a glamorous one. Not every mediator ends up with a Nobel Peace Prize. Playing this role runs the risk of antagonizing one side of the conflict or the other -- or both -- something that could end up coming back to haunt Israel.

At the same time, however, it affords a degree of international prestige that could be leveraged for the country’s benefit down the line.

For instance, if Israel can serve a useful role here, it may be in a stronger position to make certain requests of those countries who turned to it for help in this crisis -- the US, Germany and France -- regarding the Iranian nuclear agreement that may, or may not, be concluded this week.

In the Russian-Ukrainian war, however, it seems as if more than Israel wanted this role of mediator, it was pushed into it.

It was pushed into it by the West, which because of its sanctions and its rhetoric has lost its ability to serve as an honest broker with Putin; and it was pushed into it by public opinion, both domestic and international, baffled that Israel -- with its unique history -- has not taken a more assertive role in the crisis.

Jerusalem, it seems, would have liked to sit on the fence in this crisis as many other countries in the region who share Israel's fear of Iran and dependency on Russian regional goodwill have done -- such as the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan and others.

Circumstances, however, made that impossible. So on Saturday morning Bennett stepped into the breach and flew to Moscow at a moment that for Israel is pregnant with great risks as well as historic possibilities.


Yuval Noah Harari: No matter what he does, Putin has already lost this war
Whether he pulls his troops back or attempts to bomb Ukrainian cities into submission, Russian President Vladimir Putin has already lost the war he launched against the country, Israeli historian Yuval Noah Harari has argued.

“This war is not about conquering this city or that city. Putin can conquer all of Ukraine, that’s completely true,” Harari told Channel 12 news on Friday. “But this war is over the very existence of a Ukrainian people.”

Putin, he said, began the war “because he has a fantasy he’s built up in his head that there isn’t a Ukrainian people, that Ukrainians are actually Russians, that they want to be a part of Russia, and that only some small Judeo-Nazi gang in power is preventing it.”

Putin believed that he’d go in, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky would flee, the military would surrender and the population “would greet the Russian tanks with flowers.”

But “he was wrong all along the way.”

The past few days, Harari said, had proven that “there is a Ukrainian people; Zelensky did not flee; the Ukrainian military is fighting like crazy; and the population is throwing Molotov cocktails at tanks, not flowers.”
A new world order
Dark times lie ahead for the Russian people, and Putin may have been taken off guard by how quickly pressure was brought to bear. But it’s far from impossible to imagine that he will be able to survive. If some kind of coup does not materialize, it will be because Putin’s hold on power was stronger than the power of the sanctions being used to loosen it.

And China? So far, Beijing is standing back and watching. It has not openly backed Moscow, but neither is it rushing to condemn its aggression. Its abstention on an angry resolution at the United Nations is symbolic of its larger approach. Russia’s early troubles in conquering Ukraine are carefully being studied for any lessons that could apply to Taiwan. Moscow is invading its neighbor from three sides. The two countries share a massive land border, and with Belarus reduced to client status, Russia is able to funnel troops to the theater almost completely unobstructed. Taiwan is an island, and its population is not likely to be less defiant than the Ukrainians are proving to be. Beijing will not be deterred from its territorial ambitions, but its war plans are sure to be adjusted in the coming months.

Moreover, China sees many economic opportunities in the years ahead. As long as Putin holds on to power, most of the sanctions and divestments will stay in place. Europe is united as never before in outrage at Russian aggression but will be hurt by being forced to decouple economically. As the dust settles and passions cool, China will continue its economic games on the continent. More importantly, it will snatch up most of the assets that are now rendered toxic for Western investors and multinationals, especially in Russia’s energy sector, and it will have much more political leverage over an isolated Moscow. The United States could soon wake up to a Chinese powerhouse, an increasingly high-tech economy with unfettered access to all of Russia’s resource wealth.

For its part, America will come out stronger. Russia, one of its main geopolitical competitors, will be bogged down in a grueling war, with its allies in Europe strongly engaged in making sure it is as painful as possible. The German about-face on defense spending represents a real sea-change for Europe. The political scientist Charles Tilly observed that “war makes the state, and the state makes war.” It’s probably premature to conclude that the EU will emerge as a state-level player on the other side of the crisis, but some level of additional continental cohesion will certainly follow. More equitable burden-sharing on the continent means that resources will be available for the long-prophesied “pivot to Asia.” High energy prices will revive America’s struggling shale gas and oil industries and could make the kind of military buildup necessary to contain China successfully less painful than it otherwise might have been.

But a stronger America no longer means a globally predominant America. As noted above, China is likely to emerge an even more formidable challenger in the coming years. The idea of “great power competition,” first articulated in the Trump administration’s national security strategy, was until this moment playing out in a world still shaped by American hegemony. After Ukraine, the United States's antagonists, China chief among them, will have a much better sense of the limits of American power. Expect a lot more jostling, testing, and brinkmanship in the years to come. The competition will not be peaceful.
Russia says won’t back Iran nuke deal without US guarantees over Ukraine sanctions
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Saturday that Moscow is demanding guarantees from the US before backing the Iran nuclear deal, citing the current wave of Western sanctions against Russia.

Lavrov said that the nuclear talks have covered most issues and “from our point of view, if Iran agrees, this document can already be launched into the acceptance process.”

But he added that there are “problems that have appeared recently from the point of view of Russia’s interests,” due to concerns over the terms of the deal concerning Moscow’s involvement in the civilian nuclear sector in Iran and arms sales to Tehran.

Lavrov cited the “avalanche of aggressive sanctions that the West has started spewing out, which hasn’t ended as far as I understand,” over the Ukraine conflict.

He said this meant Moscow had to ask the US for guarantees first, requiring a “clear answer” that the new sanctions will not affect its rights under the nuclear deal.

“We requested that our US colleagues… give us written guarantees at the minimum level of Secretary of State that the current [sanctions] process launched by the US will not in any way harm our right to free, fully-fledged trade and economic and investment cooperation and military-technical cooperation with Iran,” Lavrov said at a news conference.

A senior Iranian official criticized the Russian demand, telling Reuters it was “not constructive” to the ongoing nuclear talks in Vienna.

“Russians had put this demand on the table [at the Vienna talks] since two days ago. There is an understanding that by changing its position in Vienna talks Russia wants to secure its interests in other places. This move is not constructive for Vienna nuclear talks,” the unnamed official was quoted as saying.
From a humble Polish hotel, Israel’s unique situation room works to extract citizens
From the lobby, it seems like a perfectly average Soviet-era Polish hotel, situated near Przemysl’s old town, first settled in the 8th century.

Normal for this week, anyway. With thousands of refugees coming across the border from Ukraine, the hotel is full of Polish police officers, who sleep and dine there between shifts at the border crossings and the roads leading to them.

Since Russia began its latest invasion of Ukraine last week, the hotel (which Israeli diplomats asked I not identify for security reasons) is also the home of the Foreign Ministry’s situation room on the Ukraine-Poland border.

In a large, mostly-empty room on the hotel’s second floor, Israel’s ambassador to Ukraine Michael Brodsky stood speaking on the phone in a corner (Brodsky was lightly injured in a car crash Friday and returned to Israel for medical care). Consul-General Lilach Attias, her voice barely audible after weeks of answering calls, sat at a table in the back, nevertheless still speaking on the phone as well.

Deputy ambassador Yoav Bistritsky, a retired military officer now in his second career as a diplomat, was out in the field, working to find Israelis stuck in the long lines at the Korczowa-Krakovets border crossing.

The entire staff of Israel’s embassy in Ukraine is now situated in Poland after being pulled out of its temporary office in Lviv last Saturday. Israel’s Polish embassy had one diplomat in the situation room, public diplomacy head Irit Yakhnes.

The Foreign Ministry flew in some heavy hitters to support the operation as well. Israel’s former ambassador to neighboring Belarus, Alon Shoham, sat with two security officers, sketching the layout of one of the crossings on a sheet and discussing how to secure their diplomats in the field.
JPost Editorial: Tens of thousands of Ukrainian Jews to apply to make Aliyah
As Zvika Klein has reported in these pages, expectations are that possibly tens of thousands of Ukrainian Jews will apply to make Aliyah and move to Israel in the coming months. Hundreds of additional applications have already been received from Russia as well where many Jews fear the repercussions of the continued war on the economy and their personal freedom.

For many, this period in time is reminiscent of the late 1980s when then-prime minister Yitzchak Shamir accurately predicted the opportunity the fall of the Soviet Union presented Israel and mobilized the country to facilitate the arrival of approximately 1 million Olim in the years to follow.

That immigration wave changed Israel for the better. It reinforced the value of Israel’s existence as a Jewish homeland, it brought skilled workers to the country which helped grow the local hi-tech industry and it also bolstered the Jewish majority in the country, forever a challenge in this region.

Some of the stories playing out right now are harrowing. Gil Hoffman spent time this past week along the Moldovan-Ukrainian border where he met some Jewish refugees en route to Israel.

One refugee was 89-year-old Ana Galanichka of Vinnytsia, Ukraine, who recalled escaping Nazi Germany as a child and once again is on the run. Speaking at a shelter in Dacia Marin, Moldova, organized by the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews and the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, she said she had the same feelings of fear she did back then.

"I fled the Nazis, and now I am fleeing the Russians," she lamented "No one believed the Russians would do such a thing until the last minute when it happened."

According to most estimates, in Ukraine today there are approximately 200,000 people who are eligible to immigrate to Israel under the Law of Return. In Russia, estimates range between 400-500 thousand.
EU suspends Russia, Belarus from Council of Baltic Sea States
The European Union said it had joined members of the Council of the Baltic Sea States (CBSS) in suspending Russia and Belarus from the Council's activities.

"This decision is a part of the European Union's and like-minded partners' response to Russia's invasion of Ukraine and the involvement of Belarus in this unprovoked and unjustified aggression," it said on Saturday.

"The EU agrees with the other members of the CBSS (Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Iceland, Latvia, Lithuania, Norway, Poland and Sweden) that the suspension of Russia and Belarus will remain in force until it is possible to resume cooperation based on respect for fundamental principles of international law," it added.

Meanwhile, a poll posted by several Ukrainian media outlets said that 82% of Ukrainians believe their country can defeat Russia.

The survey, conducted by Gradus Research found that 63% of respondents said that Ukraine's military can win the war, while 61% believe it rests on the unity and resistance of the Ukrainian people.

Only 1% of respondents would agree to peace with Russia.


Following Sanctions, Russia’s 2nd Largest Oil Company Turns on Putin
Lukoil, which produces more than 2 percent of the world's crude oil and is Russia's second-largest oil company, has called for an end to President Vladimir Putin’s bloodthirsty war in Ukraine.

The company's board of directors on Thursday called for "the soonest termination of the armed conflict," a "lasting ceasefire," and "a settlement of problems through serious negotiations and diplomacy." It also expressed "sincere empathy for all victims."

Lukoil chairman and CEO Vagit Alekperov has lost more money—$13 billion—than any other Russian billionaire since the West placed crushing sanctions on Russia, the New York Post reported.

Lukoil is the largest company in Russia not owned by Putin's government. Its stocks in London lost roughly 99 percent of their value after Putin's invasion of Ukraine, CNN reported. And it is already facing calls for a boycott in the United States, where it has 230 gas stations.

Alekperov is not the only oligarch to break ranks with the Kremlin. Alfa-Bank chairman Mikhail Fridman, a close associate of Putin, said this week that "war can never be the answer" and that he wants "bloodshed to end." Alfa-Bank has been severely hit by Western sanctions.
Free Beacon Poll: On Ukraine, Republican Voters Unified in Call for Forceful Response
An overwhelming majority of Republicans believe the United States should take an active role in stopping Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, a Washington Free Beacon survey of likely Pennsylvania voters found.

Just 14 percent of Republican voters surveyed said Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine was "not our problem," and that the United States should "do nothing" in response, according to the poll, conducted by TargetPoint Consulting. The dominant view among respondents is that President Joe Biden is not doing enough to counter Russia’s military campaign.

Forty-five percent of voters said the United States should "impose the strongest possible sanctions on Russia and seek a diplomatic resolution." Another 23 percent said the United States should "arm and support the Ukrainian resistance so they can kill as many Russians as possible." Another 17 percent said they support deploying "U.S. troops to support the Ukrainian resistance fighting the Russians."

The poll’s findings contradict many commentators and journalists' assertions that Republican voters, and particularly supporters of former president Donald Trump, have grown more receptive to an isolationist foreign policy in recent years. The isolationist view adopted by Republican figures such as Ohio's J.D. Vance, who said in the days prior to Russia's invasion that he didn't "care what happens to Ukraine one way or another," was found to be the least popular response to the growing crisis.
‘Putin Is Using Iran for His Cyber Warfare’: Israeli Security Expert
Iran may be many kilometers from the Russia-Ukraine war, but there is a connection between the two fronts, one most people aren’t really aware of.

“I grew up in Iran,” Morgan Wright, Chief Security Advisor at Israeli cyber unicorn SentinelOne says with a smile. “I know their mentality and even understand Persian because I was there as a child.” Wright may seem like a likable American with gray hair and a carefully trimmed beard, but as an expert in security he has hopped between jobs in the CIA and the NSA and has advised and assisted governments and cyber companies.

Wright is an expert on cyber strategy, online terrorism, national security and intelligence. He serves as a senior fellow at the Center for Digital Governance, a research institute of the US Federal Government that deals with digital and governance issues.

He also serves as a senior consultant and expert on the Fox network. He has testified more than once in government committees, including the need to change the way the US government collects identifying data in its digital healthcare system (healthcare.gov). He taught NSA agents behavioral analysis and spent about 18 years in uniform at various law enforcement agencies. Beyond that, he has also developed quite a few solutions for technology giants such as Cisco, Unisys or Alcatel-Lucent. When Wright says that Russia and Iran are cooperating in the cyber field, it is worth listening to him because it also concerns us.
Russia’s Potemkin army
It turns out the Russian military is not 10 feet tall after all.

The jury may be out on whether Russian President Vladimir Putin can achieve his revanchist goals in Ukraine by brutally shelling civilians into submission. Still, the verdict is in on his vaunted military, which has been unmasked as a Potemkin force — unprepared, poorly equipped, badly led, and woefully inept in waging conventional modern warfare.

It is a revelation that shocked and secretly delighted observers at the Pentagon, who feared a Russian blitzkrieg would seize the capital, Kyiv, in a matter of days, topple the government of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, and quickly install a puppet regime with total fealty to Moscow.

“The Russian military has really demonstrated what I would characterize as incompetence,” said Eliot Cohen of the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “At very basic things like tactics, combined arms, logistics … the Russian military performance has been dismal.”

Russia was believed to have gone to school on the American way of war, in particular, studying the U.S. “shock and awe” air campaign that paved the way for a lightning race to Baghdad by ground troops, who took the capital in three weeks.

But virtually everything the United States did right in Iraq, the Russians got wrong, beginning with its inability to neutralize Ukraine’s air defenses.

Russia's opening salvo of missiles took out some of Ukraine’s radars and anti-aircraft sites but left much of Ukraine’s air force and two-thirds of its air defenses intact.

As a result, Russia has been unable to establish air superiority over Ukraine, which is vital to provide cover to troops there.

Ukraine claims to have shot down an astounding 30 Russian fighter jets in the opening days of the war, killed thousands of Russian troops, and destroyed more than 200 tanks, claims that cannot be verified.
Exclusive: Former U.K. Commander in Afghanistan Blasts Biden’s ‘Insane’ Foreign Policies Leading to Ukraine Conflict
In an exclusive interview with Breitbart News on Thursday in light of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, former commander of British forces in Afghanistan Colonel Richard Kemp blasted President Biden’s “insane foreign policies,” including the U.S.’s “humiliation” in Afghanistan, its increasing oil dependence on Moscow, and its obsession with “gender pronouns, political correctness, environmentalism,” as he called to support Ukrainian resistance, depose President Putin, and withdraw support for an Iran nuclear deal, and warned of the increasing Chinese threat.

The former commander who led British forces in Afghanistan in 2003 and later joined the committee supervising the country’s intelligence services, began by explaining the background for Russia’s recent invasion of Ukraine, claiming there is a “pattern of Putin’s aggression” with a visible “correlation” with the White House.

“In 2014, when Putin invaded Crimea, [former President Barack] Obama was in the White House,” Kemp said. “Now in 2022 when he invades Ukraine, Biden’s in the White House.”

“So, we’ve got two weak presidents who [Putin] clearly feels he can act without regard to their reaction,” he added. “So I think that’s one reason why this is happening now.”

Another factor in the current conflict, according to Kemp, is the “closely connected debacle in Afghanistan” whereby Putin likely saw “what Biden did in Afghanistan, the humiliation of the United States, [and] the humiliation of NATO — who were unable to do anything in Afghanistan” without America.

“He would have looked at that and made his calculations and I think that if anything that encouraged him to do what he’s doing now,” he said. Other elements he cited were the longstanding European and German policies vis-a-vis Russia.

“When you add to that the very pro-Russian German policies that’s existed for many years under [Germany’s Angela] Merkel and the European, particularly German, dependence on Russian gas and historic reluctance to do anything in the face of Russian aggression — I think all of those different factors align to lead [Putin] where he got to now,” Kemp argued.
Finland to purchase Israeli air defense systems due to Russian threat
Finland is looking to purchase air defense systems from Israel, the Nordic nation's defense minister Antti Kaikkonen said on Finnish television show Ykkösaamu on Saturday, according to YLE News.

Finland previously sent an invitation for bids to five companies, including Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) and Rafael Advanced Defense Systems.

Now, Finland has narrowed it down to the two Israeli candidates, Kaikkonen revealed. "It's a substantial investment...a big one right after fighter jets," he said.

Under the anti-aircraft project, Finland plans to purchase equipment such as transporter erector launchers, radar systems, missiles and related integration equipment, the defense ministry said, adding the goal is to make a final purchase decision in early 2023.

The decision to increase its air defense capabilities reportedly comes as a direct response to Russia's ongoing invasion of Ukraine.


Dershowitz: The Blood Libel Comparing Russia’s Invasion to Israel’s Self Defense
Some bigoted opponents of Israel, the nation-state of the Jewish people, will stop at nothing to demean it, destroy it and condemn it. The most recent ploy has been to take advantage of the horrible tragedy in Ukraine to create a false analogy to Israel and the Palestinians.

One prominent example is Jeffrey Shaun King, who fancies himself a civil rights activist, and who tweeted the following: “It appears that it is now publicly acceptable to take up arms, to make and use Molotov Cocktails and to take any measures possible to defend your literal home and homeland to violent occupying forces and invaders,” explicitly referring to Palestinians who murder Israeli civilians. British Labor MP Julie Elliott also compared the Russian aggression to Israel’s self-defense measures. There have been others as well, including the Syrian government, which voted at the United Nations to support the Russian invasion while comparing it to Israel’s “occupation,” which it condemns.

The mantra of these bigots is to proclaim that the Palestinians are the Ukrainians, and that they have as much right to throw Molotov cocktails at Israeli civilians as Ukrainians have to throw them at Russian soldiers. The analogy is so absurd on so many grounds, that it is hard to know where to begin.

In the first place, Ukraine has never fired rockets into Russian civilian areas, the way terrorists in Gaza, Lebanon, and the West Bank have done. Ukraine in no way threatens the existence of Russia, whereas Hamas, Hezbollah and other Palestinian terrorist groups claim their goal is the total destruction of the nation-state of the Jewish people. Nor is this only rhetoric. In 1967 and 1973, Arab armies posed a significant military threat to Israel’s existence. Israel overcame these aggressive assaults and occupied the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, and the Golan Heights as defensive measures. Since that time, they have repeatedly offered to exchange land for peace, if the Palestinians would agree to the two-state solution proposed by the United Nations in 1947, President Bill Clinton and Prime Minister Ehud Barak in 2001, and Prime Minister Ehud Ohmert in 2008.


The Future of the Democrats and the Mainstreaming of Antisemitism
The Times Magazine piece also was part of an effort by the left to shape the narrative about the Deutch-Tlaib confrontation in such a way as to flip it from one about exposing antisemitism to another in which his comments can be falsely depicted as Islamophobia.

Tlaib’s falsehoods about “apartheid” and “war crimes,” as well as her delegitimization of Jewish rights and desire to wipe out Israel, are no longer outlier positions. Support for intersectional myths about the Jewish state being a function of “white privilege” and Zionism being a form of racism is growing among the Democrats’ left-wing base. As with critical race theory indoctrination in the schools, fashionable anti-Zionist advocacy grants a permission slip to antisemitism. And the talk about Islamophobia is merely a way to silence criticism of Muslim Jew-hatred.

While The Times may treat the idea that a single Jewish state is one too many as a reasonable opinion that merely constitutes “criticism” of Israel, honest Democrats and almost all Republicans understand that the legitimization of such views sets a terrible precedent.

Instead of condemning people like Tlaib and Omar, who support the antisemitic BDS movement, moderate pro-Israel figures such as Hoyer and Biden have cozied up to them. Fearful of the wrath of the party’s base, they have praised Tlaib instead of stripping her of committee assignments, as they’ve done with some outlier Republicans.

While extremist Republicans like Rep. Marjorie Taylor-Greene (R-Ga.) are widely condemned and ostracized, left-wing Jew-haters like Tlaib, who run interference in Washington for Hamas terrorists and others who want to destroy Israel, are lauded and treated as their party’s rock stars.

Deutch may be leaving Congress to make more money or because, like so many other Democratic incumbents, he dreads wasting years as a member of a powerless minority in light of the likelihood that the GOP will win back control of Congress in the midterm elections later this year. But, as the stock of the hard-left rises and support for hateful positions on Israel grows among readers of the Times, it’s impossible to escape the conclusion that Deutch is abandoning the field just at the moment when his honesty about the antisemitism of Tlaib and other “progressives” is needed more than ever.

While others may attempt to step up to replace him, it’s almost impossible not to see his resignation and the chattering classes’ continued flattery of people like Tlaib as a sign that the Jew-haters will soon be the ones in charge of the Democratic Party.
What the NY Times Tlaib Feature Represents
The latest New York Times hagiography of an anti-Israel activist has dropped.

The weekend’s fawning feature is about Rashida Tlaib—or more specifically, about the righteousness of Rashida Tlaib’s anti-Israel dogmas. It follows just a few months after the paper printed another flattering story about an anti-Israel (and anti-Jewish) activist, Gaza poetry professor Refaat Alareer.

The premise of the earlier piece was, commendably, retracted with an editors’ note acknowledging failures in reporting. (Alareer was feted as a bridge-builder, though he is a hatemonger.)

The cover image for the New York Times fawning feature on Rashida Tlaib.

The new piece, which was published online on Thursday and is slated to appear in print in this weekend’s Sunday Magazine under the headline “What Rashida Tlaib Represents,” will get no such sweeping correction. That’s because author Rozina Ali was honest — not on the details of the conflict, but at least about the essence of Tlaib’s extreme positions.

Tlaib seeks an end to Israel. Ali more or less admits it. Tlaib is unhappy about Israel’s life-saving anti-rocket system, the Iron Dome. Ali doesn’t deny it. Indeed, to conceal these beliefs would be counterproductive, since the core premise of the piece is that they are noble positions.

In promoting that conclusion Ali plays tricks on her readers, with the tendentious characterizations starting at the very first sentence: “Last May,” she writes, “following protests in East Jerusalem over planned evictions of Palestinians, Hamas started firing rockets toward Tel Aviv, and Israeli airstrikes pounded residential buildings in the Gaza Strip.”

Hamas started a war. It did so by launching scores of indiscriminate rockets. Israel responded militarily to bring an end to the attacks. For Ali to be so wishy-washy about the order of events here—the word “and” works to conceal a clear sequence to the attacks—is either a failure at forthright explanation, or a success at disingenuous writing.
UN may update blacklist of companies operating in Israeli settlements
The United Nations is considering publishing an update to its blacklist of businesses operating in east Jerusalem, the West Bank and Golan Heights.

An initial list of 112 such companies was published in 2020. The mandate to make changes to that database on an annual basis, however, has been unfilled due to lack of funds.

On Friday the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michele Bachelet said she would consider an update even though funding remained an issue.

“I am currently considering possible options for an update on an exceptional basis and without prejudice as to future decisions,” Bachelet told the UN Human Rights Council during its 49th session in Geneva that opened on February 28 and ends on April 1.

Bachelet noted that she had “flagged to the UNHRC both at its 46th session and again at its 47th session, the issue of resource requirements.”

“Specifically,” Bachelet explained, “it is not possible for [her] office to absorb on an open-ended recurring basis into the future the substantial resources that updating the data base and reporting to the council would annually imply.”

She noted that anything beyond an exceptional one-time update, could “only be discharged consistent with the organization’s budgeting process applicable to funding mandates of the council.”
Palestinians decry world's ‘double standards’ on Russia-Ukraine war
While Palestinian leaders have chosen not to take sides in the Russia-Ukraine war, they have nevertheless begun accusing the international community of applying two sets of rules in dealing with various crises.

The Palestinian leaders’ main argument is that the international community is being hypocritical and racist by being more sympathetic toward the Ukrainians because of their color, religion and race.

They are also taking it to task for allegedly ignoring Israeli “crimes” against the Palestinians while condemning Russia for its invasion of Ukraine and suspected “war crimes.”

Mahmoud al-Habbash, a senior adviser to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, on Friday condemned the international community over its “silence on Israeli violations while rushing to denounce human rights violations in other parts of the world.”

Addressing the international community in a sermon he delivered during Friday prayers in Ramallah, Habbash asked, “Does international legitimacy apply according to religion, color, race or geography?”

Referring to the Russia-Ukraine war, Habbash said that “when events occur here or there, the international community is mobilized. But no one notices the Palestinian people who have been facing injustice for more than 70 years. Justice and law do not accept selectivity.”

Echoing the same sentiment, another senior Palestinian official, PLO Executive Committee member Hussein al-Sheikh, wrote on Twitter: “When color, religion and race become an identity, values, morals and humanity are lost. When international legitimacy is breached by double standards, justice is lost, rights are destroyed and power becomes tyrannical.”
New York Times Refuses Ad Opposing Iran Nuclear Deal, Demanding Changes: ‘We Can’t Accept Paragraph Two’
The New York Times is refusing to publish a full-page advertisement advocating against a new Iran nuclear deal unless the advertiser changes it to remove references to Iran murdering Americans.

“The New York Times has done everything to block the ad … trying to knock the stuffing out of the ad so there is nothing left,” the founder of the World Values Network, Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, told The Algemeiner. “They want us to do an ad that doesn’t say that Iran did anything wrong.”

In a Friday afternoon telephone call between a New York Times advertising representative and Boteach, the Times representative told Boteach the language in the ad saying Iran had murdered Americans needed to be softened. “You are accusing a country. You cannot do that,” she said. “You can’t say it directly.”

Boteach responded, “For some reason you guys are protecting Iran. It just sounds like the New York Times is protecting Iran. I don’t get it.”

The Times representative responded, “This is the only way the ad will run.”

Boteach responded by saying the Times’ policy was bizarre and disgraceful. “I’ve never been told to remove facts to protect a terrorist country. You are tying our hands from even mentioning the people who killed American soldiers.”

The ad representative said the policy had been set by higher-ups. “It’s not up to me,” she said.

When Boteach pointed out that the newspaper’s home page said “Russia” was invading Ukraine, the ad representative said that the paper’s news and advertising divisions have different standards.
Amnesty International helped usher in Iran’s Islamic Revolution
HOW, THEN, did the image of the shah as a bloodthirsty dictator become a reported “fact”? Several organizations, Amnesty foremost among them, portrayed the shah as precisely that.

In 1976, Amnesty International filed a report asserting that the “execution of political prisoners” was widespread. Amnesty, Cooper noted, “repeated claims made by the Iranian opposition groups that between 25,000 and 100,000 people were in jail on trumped-up political charges.”

Subsequently, the International Commission of Jurists described human rights violations as “unprecedented” – this, Cooper points out, at a time when Pol Pot’s dictatorship ruled Cambodia and Idi Amin ruled Uganda with an iron fist.

Amnesty’s report was influential.

Several members of the US Congress would cite it when opposing military aid to the shah in his final years in power. Prominent journalists like Mary McCory would treat it as gospel, questioning the need for American support and calling the shah an arms “junkie who mainlines on anything that flies, shoots or is armor-clad.”

The New York Times, among others, would treat Amnesty’s claims as “established” fact – and the Times’s reporting would be cited, archives now reveal, by the CIA.

Khomeini certainly knew how to play the press. His aides instructed him to tell Western reporters that “we want democracy and rights for all,” noting “this is what the Americans like to hear.”

Jonathan Randal, a Washington Post correspondent based in Beirut, was encouraged by Khomeini allies to write stories on the shah’s human rights abuses. The journalist, Cooper notes, even agreed to drive to a bazaar and “collect a suitcase that turned out to be full of cash and bring it out of the country.” Randal had been “manipulated” by “anti-shah propagandists.” The Carter administration felt the pressure.

Senator “Scoop” Jackson felt that the administration’s subsequent criticisms of the shah “conveyed to the Iranian public that we were going to dump him.”

Presciently, Jackson warned that with Khomeini at the helm, Iran “would become a base of operations of the PLO and a significant source of strength for radical Arab regimes. This… shift means increased danger for Israel” and a “shift in the balance of power of historic proportions.”

The consequences of that shift are still being felt today, with a regime whose systemic human rights abuses vastly exceed even the most fervent imaginations of the shah’s critics four decades ago.


Crump Text Indicates Anti-Zionist Torch Being Passed from Mainliners to Evangelicals
Since the late 1990s, mainline (AKA, liberal) Protestants in the United States have played a supporting but crucial role in the demonization of Israel in American society and the deterioration of the Jewish condition in the U.S.

Now that mainline Protestantism is collapsing, it appears the mantle for this style of activism is being handed over to another, somewhat healthier religious community in the United States – Evangelical Protestantism.

Two books serve as the markers of this process.

The first book is Whose Land? Whose Promise? What Christians are not being told about Israel and the Palestinians published by Pilgrim Press, the publishing house of the United Church of Christ. This text, written by Gary Burge, was riddled with errors and a hostile theology that portrayed Jewish sovereignty in the Holy Land as an affront to God. In a now notorious passage that was toned down in a subsequent edition published in 2013, Burge interpreted a passage from the New Testament (John 15:6) to affirm his assessment that Jews who try to live in the land of Israel without accepting Jesus Christ as their lord and savior will be “cast out and burned.”

This passage, redolent as it was with centuries of Christian antisemitism, which culminated in the Holocaust — where many Jews were in fact cast out of society, murdered, and then burned — was simply a shock to behold. At the time of his book’s publication, Burge was a professor at Wheaton College, an Evangelical school in Illinois, and a prominent New Testament scholar in the Evangelical world.

He knew what he was doing.

The fact that Burge’s book was published by a mainline Protestant denomination that had condemned Christian antisemitism and lamented the role this ideology played in laying the groundwork for the Holocaust indicated that there was something wrong with the American mainline’s witness about the Arab-Israeli conflict, an assessment that was confirmed by subsequent events.

In the years after the publication of Burge’s text, which was invoked as credible by numerous Christian peacemakers, three mainline churches joined the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement by anti-Israel divestment resolutions. The passage of these resolutions by the United Church of Christ (UCC), the Presbyterian Church USA (PCUSA), and the Episcopal Church legitimized dishonest anti-Israel propaganda in American society, and in so doing serve to justify hostility toward American Jews who were portrayed as complicit in Israel’s alleged sins.


European Council adopts its conclusions on racism, antisemitism
The European Council on Friday adopted its conclusions on combating racism and antisemitism, including treating antisemitism as a separate phenomenon from all types of racism by creating a separate resolution with guidelines toward the treatment of antisemitism in all EU countries.

The declaration makes the fight against antisemitism a priority of Europe’s executive branch and comes after years of the World Jewish Congress working with the leadership of the European Union on codifying measures to fight antisemitism at the European, member state and local levels.

The conclusions were released by the council under France’s presidency – a six-month rotating position it assumed at the beginning of this year.

The European Council is composed of the heads of state or government of the EU member states, as well as the council’s president and the president of the European Commission.

“The fight against racism and antisemitism is one of the political priorities of the Presidency of the Council of the European Union as stated by the President of the French Republic on December 9, 2021,” the official European Council document states.

The EC will urge social media companies to remove content with antisemitic rhetoric, strengthen security at Jewish institutions and adopt the IHRA definition of antisemitism.

“With rising antisemitism and hatred across Europe, we thank France’s leadership for the European Council’s adoption of the conclusions,” WJC executive vice president Maram Stern told The Jerusalem Post on Friday.

This is a strong demonstration of the French and EU commitment to combating antisemitism, as well as recognition that antisemitism remains a serious threat.
Antisemitic tropes from 13th century England still exist today, says The Licoricia of Winchester Appeal trustee
Two trustees from The Licoricia of Winchester Appeal, Danny Habel and Tony Stoller, appeared on the most recent episode of Podcast Against Antisemitism where they spoke on the life of Licoricia of Winchester and the recent statue unveiling.

Licoricia was a Jewish businesswoman who has been described as “the most important Jewish woman in medieval England” and a leader in her community. She lived in the 13th century and was murdered in 1277, just thirteen years before King Edward I expelled the Jews from England.

“At a time when women really were very nondescript and not in the histories much, ​​she stood out,” Mr Habel told our host. “She was a businesswoman. She made the most of it on her own as a single mother with five children in a very hostile society.

“As time went on, she was obviously a bold woman. She was close to Henry III…she would go into the royal court and address the king and the courtiers in French, in their language. She would be dealing with people in the local community in English. As part of her very confrontational business of finance, she would be in court quite often acting on her own behalf in Latin. So, she was able to face up to people, but at the time same, she was a community leader.”

Mr Stoller agreed that Licoricia was “highly significant,” though added that this did not necessarily protect her completely. “She was imprisoned for eight months in order to get money out of her at one stage…You lose Henry III, you get Edward I, you get extremely antisemitic demands by Simon De Montfort and the barons…Licoricia is murdered, we don’t think we know why. The guess is this might have been a way of somebody avoiding paying back money that was owed to her.”

When asked about the lessons that could be learned from Licoricia’s story, Mr Habel noted that “In Licoricia’s time, there were certain tropes and concepts about the way people thought about Jews and strangely enough, they’re exactly the same as today.” Mr Habel said that some of the tropes levelled against Jews included the belief that they were all rich, that they were responsible for the death of Christ, and that they were evil.
Vandals steal Anne Frank statue in Buenos Aires
Vandals have stolen this city’s memorial to Anne Frank in what Jewish leaders are calling a crime likely motivated by the value of the statue’s metals, not antisemitism.

The Netherlands’ embassy in Buenos Aires tweeted an image of the statue’s spot on Friday alongside a message condemning the robbery. Police have not released any details. Several bronze and other metal statues have been stolen throughout the city in recent years, by what some have called a “bronze mafia.” The largest Jewish cemetery in the wider Buenos Aires province has been robbed repeatedly since last year.

“If this were a case of antisemitism, there should be some vandalization of the statue, some signs, they should have destroyed the statue. But that isn’t the case. It is for the metal,” Ariel Gelblung, the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s director for Latin America, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

The Wiesenthal Center’s Latin American branch called for a swift response from authorities.






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