Wednesday, March 30, 2022

03/30 Links Pt2: NYTs Uses Israel-Arab Summit to Claim Ben-Gurion ‘Never Believed in Real Peace’; UN to name investigator on Israel who compares it to Nazi Germany

From Ian:

New York Times Uses Israel-Arab Summit to Claim Ben-Gurion ‘Never Believed in Real Peace’
The summit was held at Sde Boker, the site in the Negev that was Ben-Gurion’s final home. The Times reports:
[I]f he were alive today, “no one would be more stunned than Ben-Gurion himself” to see the summit, said Tom Segev, an Israeli historian and biographer of the Israeli leader.

“He never believed in real peace with the Arabs,” Mr. Segev said of Ben-Gurion.

That’s nonsense. Here is Prime Minister Ben-Gurion’s statement to the Knesset on May 6, 1963, from the website of Israel’s foreign ministry:
When we proclaimed our renewed independence at four o’clock in the afternoon of Friday, May 14, 1948, we declared:

“We extend the hand of peace and good-neighborliness to all the States around us and to their peoples, and we call upon them to cooperate in mutual helpfulness with the independent Jewish nation in its Land. The State of Israel is prepared to make its contribution in a concerted effort for the advancement of the entire Middle East.”

Israel realizes that her fate is interwoven with the fate of all mankind, and her peace depends on the peace of the world….I believe with implicit faith that the day will come when true peace will reign between Israel and her neighbors, but until that day we must ward off the danger of the war that the Arab rulers are planning against Israel.

How can the historian Tom Segev possibly know for sure that Ben Gurion was lying when he said he believed in peace? And why would the Times pass along that accusation to its readers without any evidence, or without providing the ample evidence to the contrary?

Segev’s biography of Ben-Gurion was rightfully panned by Ephraim Karsh in the Wall Street Journal (“Segev, like his fellow revisionists, is not bothered with mere facts in his endeavor to rewrite Ben-Gurion and, by extension, Israel’s history in an image of his own making.”)

It’s all a useful reminder that for Israel’s real enemies at the New York Times, the issue isn’t really the post-1967 “occupation” of the West Bank, or Israel’s supposed lurch toward the authoritarian right under Benjamin Netanyahu. The real issue is 1948-style Zionism itself: the mere existence of a Jewish state of the sort brought into reality by Ben-Gurion.

Leave it to the Times to take a positive story about Israel’s blossoming relations with its Arab neighbors and somehow find a way to turn it into a nasty, posthumous attack on Ben-Gurion.


'Arafat was a coward and the PA is paying a heavy price for it'
The arduous attempts to prevent terrorist attacks, the decision to drive the Palestinian Authority from Jerusalem, and the missed opportunity to eliminate top Hamas leaders: former Shin Bet chief MK Avi Dichter recalls the days of the iconic Operation Defensive Shield.

Passover night, March 27, 2002: The Dichter family home in Ashkelon was full of family and friends. All of a sudden, the Israel Security Agency director's phone rings out. Avi Dichter, by then a veteran of the service, was used to being away from home on holidays. Sometimes it was a security incident. Sometimes it was a source asking for an urgent meeting. This time, it was difficult for him to just get up and leave. After all, he was the host.

"I answered the phone, and the voice on the other end of the line said 'there's been an explosion at the Park Hotel in Netanya. We're checking to see if it was cooking gas,' recalls Dichter. "I was familiar with the routine of reporting a gas explosion. People found it difficult to report that there had been a suicide bombing, so when they didn't yet have proof, they would usually say, 'there may have been a gas explosion.'

"I told the guests that I had to leave and on the way to the office, I spoke with Arik Sharon, who was prime minister at the time. By now it was obvious that it was a terrorist attack and that we would be launching Operation Defensive Shield which was something that had already been discussed. Sharon decided that the main target would be Ramallah so as to send the Palestinian leadership a clear message.

Dichter, 69, has many stories from those dark days. The Likud MK and former public security and deputy defense minister was appointed to head the Shin Bet in May 2000. The Second Intifada erupted in October of that year, and terrorist attacks claimed hundreds of Israeli lives. Israel's response, 2002's Operation Defensive Shield, dealt a lethal blow to the terror infrastructure in Judea and Samaria.

Dichter says that to comprehend how Operation Defensive Shield came about, you have to go back to August 1993, when the Oslo Accords were signed. "You have to go from there, through the establishment of the Palestinian Authority, the Western Wall tunnel riot, and then Defensive Shield. Those are more or less, the main waystations," he says. "The Oslo Accords were finalized without the knowledge of the defense establishment which had no idea that the government was about to sign the agreements.

"At the time I was head of the Southern District at the Shin Bet and 90% of the burden fell on me. We had great expectations for cooperation from the other side because we knew everyone, from the head of the preventive security apparatus Mohammed Dahlan through to Moussa Arafat, who was chief of military intelligence. They were people that I had sat down with just like we are sitting together now. PLO leader Yasser Arafat in 1994 (Moshe Shai/Archives)

"It's like when you marry a woman, and the next day you find out that she isn't who you thought she was. When the terrorist attacks began, we supplied them [the PA] with intelligence so they could take care of things. But instead of taking care of things, they were looking for where we got our intelligence from. After [PM Yitzhak] Rabin's murder [in November 1995], when Shimon Peres was prime minister, we had a meeting with [PLO Chairman] Yasser Arafat, Peres asked me for a breakdown of the situation. I said that the man behind the suicide bombings was Mohammed Deif," he said, naming the head of Izzadin al-Qassam Brigades, Hamas military wing.

"Arafat looked at [PA security chief] Mohammed Dahlan who was sitting next to him and said 'Mohammed who?' Dahlan said, 'The guy I told you about.' Arafat replied, 'You never told me anything.' We all knew he was lying. The most frustrating thing was that the Palestinian Authority was doing absolutely nothing to stop the violence."
UN Watch: Report: UN to name investigator on Israel who compares it to Nazi Germany
The U.N. Human Rights Council is planning to violate its own impartiality rules by appointing a new investigator on Palestinian human rights who exults in calling Israel an “apartheid” state and repeatedly compares the Palestinian situation to the Nazi Holocaust, according to a new report by the independent non-governmental monitoring group UN Watch.

Francesca Albanese, an Italian lawyer who worked in Jordan for UNRWA, is slated to be the next “Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories,” whose mandate is actually to investigate solely “Israel’s violations.”

While UN experts are obliged to be objective and impartial, UN Watch’s 25-page report reveals that Albanese has repeatedly equated the Palestinian Nakba with the Nazi Holocaust, accused Israel of apartheid, genocide, ethnic cleansing, and war crimes.

On her application, Albanese was asked whether she holds “any views or opinions that could prejudice the manner in which the candidate discharges the mandate.” She replied “No.”

Yet just last year, Albanese acknowledged the opposite, saying her “deeply held personal views” on the Palestinian issue “could compromise my objectivity.”

Indeed, Albanese has said Israel is “keeping captive millions of civilians,” organized a panel on “Israel Apartheid,” and campaigns for an arms embargo against Israel.

On her application, Albanese also certified no personal conflicts of interest, failing to disclose that her husband, who compares Palestinians to Jews of the Warsaw Ghetto resisting the Nazis, formerly worked for the Palestinian Authority, where he authored a report on Israel’s “exploitative” policies.

“According to its own rules,” said Hillel Neuer, executive director of UN Watch, “the UNHRC must give paramount importance to impartiality when selecting its experts, and Francesca Albanese is the very opposite of impartial.”

Albanese Expected to Follow Anti-Israel Agenda of Outgoing Michael Lynk
UN Watch: Axis of Iran and Amnesty International Accuse Israel of "Apartheid"
UN Watch's Hillel Neuer took the floor at the United Nations Human Rights Council to call out the Moscow-inspired disinformation campaign of "Zionism is Racism." March 25, 2022.


Yisrael Medad: The Arabs Who Fled Mandate Palestine, Came from...?
Is it possible that a great number of Arabs who fled Mandate Palestine in 1948 actually were Arabs from across the Middle East who had recently arrived for better employment opportunities?




Russia denies striking Jewish Uman site, says synagogue used by Ukraine army
Russia denied on Wednesday a claim by Ukraine that it had struck the town of Uman, visited by tens of thousands of Hasidic Jews each year, and showed pictures of what it said were Ukrainian forces loading arms near a synagogue there.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky told Israeli lawmakers on March 20 that Russia had struck Uman on the first day of the invasion in February.

"I want to underscore that the Russian armed forces do not strike civilian targets as part of the special military operation," Russian defense ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov said of Zelensky's remark.

Russia, Konashenkov said, had not hit any religious buildings or other places of public worship.

Tens of thousands of Hasidic Jews descend on Uman every Jewish New Year to visit the grave of Rabbi Nachman of Breslov, who revived the Hasidic movement and died in 1810.

Konashenkov also showed March 21 pictures of what appeared to be Ukrainian forces loading arms near a synagogue in the town. Reuters was unable to independently verify the photographs.


Jonathan Tobin: Andy Levin and why you can’t support both Israel and its enemies
Rep. Andy Levin (D-Mich.) makes a point of saying that he is “proudly Jewish.” He can back up that assertion by, among other things, citing the fact that he’s been the president of a synagogue, a job that can make the travails and brickbats that are the daily fare of members of Congress look like a vacation. He also says he supports the idea of a Jewish homeland though as part of a two-state solution with the Palestinians.

Levin, 61, also has deep roots in the Democratic establishment. He is the son of Sander Levin, an 18-term member of Congress from Michigan, whose seat he inherited when his father, now 90, retired. On top of that, he’s the nephew of the late Carl Levin, who spent 36 years representing Michigan in the Senate. Though both of the elder Levins were staunch liberals, they were also generally supportive of Israel.

So why then has Andy Levin become the focus of a controversy about how we define the term pro-Israel that has drawn in AIPAC, left-wing Jewish groups, and a laundry list of current and former liberal Jewish members of Congress who are mobilizing to defend him?

The controversy centers on an email that was sent by David Victor, a former national president of AIPAC, who recently circulated a fundraising email that urges donors to back Levin’s primary opponent. Due to Michigan’s loss of population, the state lost a congressional seat. When the district lines were redrawn, Levin found himself in a contest with another incumbent—Rep. Haley Stevens (D-Mich.)—for what is likely to be a safe Democratic seat.

But Victor didn’t just advocate for the 38-year-old Stevens, who is not Jewish but also a supporter of a two-state solution, and who is regarded as a much stronger advocate for Israel and against the BDS movement than Levin. He went further and said that the primary “presents a rare opportunity to defeat arguably the most corrosive member of Congress to the U.S.-Israel relationship.” The letter was posted on Twitter by an official for a left-wing Jewish group that supports Levin.
Senate committee advances Deborah Lipstadt as antisemitism monitor
Two Republicans joined the Democrats on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in approving Holocaust scholar Deborah Lipstadt to be the State Department’s next antisemitism monitor on Tuesday, paving the way for her likely confirmation by the full Senate.

Marco Rubio of Florida and Mitt Romney of Utah joined the Democratic majority in a vote, a committee spokesman confirmed to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. The vote was 13-9 overall.

Lipstadt’s nomination has been held up by Republicans for months in part because she described a view advanced by Republican Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin as “white supremacy” in a tweet last year.

Johnson, who has tried hard to convince his Republican colleagues to vote against Lipstadt, said she was guilty of “malicious poison” for her March 2021 tweet, a Jewish Insider reporter inside the hearing room reported. Johnson had successfully pressured the ranking Republican on the committee, James Risch of Idaho, to use his prerogative to delay the vote for months.

Risch relented in February, allowing her hearing to take place, and Johnson unloaded on Lipstadt at the hearing. Lipstadt did not apologize but said she could have been clearer in her tweet that she was not calling Johnson a white supremacist, instead aiming to describe a statement he made as white supremacy. Johnson continued to attempt to rally Republicans so that Lipstadt would advance only on a narrow Democratic vote.

Johnson had told a talk show host in March 2021 that the Jan. 6 rioters, who sought to stop Congress from affirming Joe Biden’s presidential election, did not pose a threat and “loved their country”; he would have been concerned, he said, if Black Lives Matters protesters had been in the Capitol.

“This is white supremacy/nationalism,” Lipstadt tweeted then, attaching an account of Johnson’s remarks. “Pure and simple.”
Republican Jewish Coalition PAC endorses Marjorie Taylor Greene opponent Jennifer Strahan
The Republican Jewish Coalition’s political action committee is endorsing Jennifer Strahan, a primary challenger to Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) in Georgia’s newly drawn 14th Congressional District, Jewish Insider has learned.

“If you are a conservative Republican who cares about the issues facing America, if you are a Trump conservative in that district, you will get somebody in Jennifer Strahan who shares those views without all the baggage that comes with Marjorie Taylor Greene,” Matt Brooks, the RJC’s executive director, told JI in an interview on Tuesday.

The RJC opposed Greene in the 2020 primary and has frequently criticized the freshman congresswoman’s antisemitic remarks and other extremist statements she has made while in office. Last month, Greene drew widespread criticism after she spoke at a white nationalist conference hosted by the Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes.

But the group, which does not typically endorse against GOP incumbents, had not indicated until now whether it would back an opposing candidate in the May primary, where three Republicans, including Strahan, are going up against Greene.

“Jennifer is a terrific candidate and she’s the strongest one running against Marjorie Taylor Greene,” Brooks said, describing Strahan as “a true conservative who doesn’t traffic in antisemitic conspiracy theories, doesn’t speak to white nationalist organizations and doesn’t applaud and cheer on” Russian President Vladimir Putin.


Khaled Abu Toameh: Arabs: Biden Administration Harming US interests
"In 1979 Iranian students established their own group, which over time turned into an extremist military organization under the name of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. The group seized control of the US Embassy in Tehran. Two years later the Iranian Revolutionary Guard.... struck buildings in Lebanon that housed American... soldiers, killing of 307 individuals, including 241 Americans.... In 1996, terrorists linked to Iran and the Revolutionary Guards, and their Hezbollah proxy attacked a residential complex in Al-Khobar, eastern Saudi Arabia, killing and wounding many American experts and other innocent people. Since 1990, Iran has turned into an incubator for Al-Qaeda and ISIS." — Mohammed Al-Saed, Saudi writer, Okaz, March 24, 2022.

"The events of September 11 [2001] came on top of those crimes, which were committed by Osama bin Laden and Al-Zawahiri, all of whom had the support of Iran. In the aftermath of the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, Iran fueled the horrific killings and bombings that affected the US Army through different cells that were driven by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. Thousands of American soldiers were killed." — Mohammed Al-Saed, Okaz, March 24, 2022.

"[T]he Democratic administration headed by Barack Obama is not happy with what Trump did...." — Mohammed Al-Saed, Okaz, March 24, 2022.

"The Houthis bomb Jeddah, Biden rewards Iran....The Biden administration knows that Iran finances the Houthi group and supplies it with missiles." — Sawsan Al-Sha'er, Bahraini journalist, Al-Watan, March 22, 2022.

"[T]here is no American policy in Syria other than placing Syria entirely in the hands of Iran." — Nadim Koteich, Lebanese TV presenter and journalist, Asharq Al-Awsat, March 22, 2022.

The Houthi militia rejects any settlement to the civil war in Yemen and seeks to assist Iran in establishing a foothold in the Arab region. "This is what the US administrations could never comprehend... It encouraged Iran to turn Yemen into a base for Iranian missiles and drones. — Kheirallah Kheirallah, veteran Lebanese journalist, Al-Arab, March 28, 2022.

The crisis between the Biden administration and the Arab countries, especially the Gulf states, is so deep that it could take years, if not decades, to repair the damage caused to America's interests in the Middle East.
Three Republicans Defect To Advance Biden Nominee Accused of Lying About Iran Deal
Three Senate Republicans shattered party unity to advance the nomination of a State Department nominee who has been accused of lying to Congress about the terms of a new nuclear agreement with Iran.

On Tuesday, the nomination of Barbara Leaf, a veteran Democratic foreign policy hand who was nominated last year to serve as assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs, was approved by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee after three Republicans—Sens. Mitt Romney (Utah), Rand Paul (Ky.), and Rob Portman (Ohio)—abandoned their party to help Democrats push the nomination to the finish line. Leaf's nomination will come to a full vote in the Senate and will likely be approved if these Republicans abandon their colleagues to vote in her favor.

Leaf has seen her nomination blocked from a vote for nearly a year by Sen. Ted Cruz (R., Texas), who maintains that during her confirmation hearing last year in the Senate she provided inadequate or false answers about the Biden administration's policies on Iran, the Muslim Brotherhood, and peace agreements between Israel and its neighbors.

The contested vote came at a precarious time for Senate Democrats, who had to delay Leaf's vote last week due to poor attendance from committee Democrats. The showdown over the vote comes as the Biden administration is working with Russia to secure a revamped nuclear deal with Iran. The administration is poised to remove Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps from the terrorist list as part of concessions meant to entice Iran into accepting an accord that will provide it with billions of dollars in cash windfalls. Leaf's nomination was seen as a proxy vote for the Biden administration's nuclear deal and a bellwether for Republican opposition.

Cruz spearheaded a Republican campaign to highlight Leaf's efforts to mislead lawmakers about the terms of a new nuclear accord. Leaf, in written testimony to Cruz that was viewed by the Washington Free Beacon, said in September that the Biden administration was not seeking a deal with Iran that is separate from the original 2015 accord, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. Asked for the details of a potential, weaker new deal, Leaf said, "There have been no such arrangements, deals, or agreements contemplated to reduce pressure on Iran."

Cruz and other Republicans say Leaf's response was meant to obfuscate efforts by the Biden administration to ink an accord, which they are calling a "less-for-less" deal with Iran.


Antisemitism on College Campuses Incentivized at Expense of Jewish Students
Spewing Jew-hatred is a lucrative opportunity often resulting in big paychecks. College campuses are using public funds to pay antisemitic speakers who spread their messages of hate and vitriol at the expense of the safety of Jewish students on campus.

Last week, it was disgraced former professor Steven Salaita earning a reported $12,000 to speak at Virginia Tech, the same university who refused to hire him after he was fired from a job at University of Illinois for his slew of antisemitic and inflammatory comments during Operation Protective Edge in 2014. During the speech he blamed Jews for the demise of his career and said “Zionism is inhuman.”

This week, Mohammed El-Kurd, a radical Palestinian activist and author, will be paid $5,000 by Duke University’s student senate to spread antisemitic blood libels. El-Kurd will be joined by journalist Ahmed El-Din, who is also earning a per diem, at an event titled, “Narrating Resistance and Agency: Shifting the Discourse on Palestine.” The request for funding this event came from Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), a group known for demonizing Jewish college students who express support for the Jewish nation.

A recent event at American University featuring El-Kurd was moved off campus after protests, but El-Kurd claims to have spoken at “nearly 50 universities and [he] won’t stop anytime soon.” With his travel paid, accommodations covered, and a per diem of $5,000 it isn’t surprising that El-Kurd won’t stop – this potentially adds up to $250,000 of annual income for him.

On April 6th convicted cop-killer and outspoken antisemite Anthony Bottom, now known as Jalil Muntaqim, was going to be paid $1,300 through a Promoting Excellence in Diversity Grant at SUNY Brockport, but the speaking fee was rescinded after a private donor intervened when the use of public funds to pay the speakers fee was brought into question. Bottom’s appearance was moved online with campus administration citing “security concerns.”

As the executive director of watchdog organization StopAntisemitism, I receive an onslaught of reports of antisemitism from Jewish students after events like these. Most – if not all – of those students are not aware that their tuition fees and student government fees are being used to fund these highly controversial and inflammatory speakers.
2,000 Petition University of California to Reject ‘Politically Motivated, Academically Vacuous, Harmful Proposal’
For the first time in over 20 years, and only the second time in nearly a century, the University of California (UC) is considering adding a new admissions requirement that would force all California high schools to teach the controversial and antisemitic “Liberated” ethnic studies curriculum, according to a new petition signed by close to 2,000 UC students, faculty, parents, alumni, donors, and California taxpayers.

“As UC stakeholders, we are outraged and appalled that a small group of activists seeking to circumvent state law and contravene the will of the public, state legislators, the Governor, and top education officials, have been allowed to hijack UC’s faculty governance process for their own political and financial gain,” wrote the petitioners to the UC Academic Council, which is currently considering the proposal.

The petitioners note that this “ill-conceived and dangerous proposal” is the direct result of a small group of activist-educators; it has absolutely no educational merit or justification; and it will unleash hatred and bigotry, especially antisemitism, into California’s public, charter, and private schools. The petitioners also expose that the proposal originated from a UC Berkeley student activist and that the six-member “UC Faculty Ethnic Studies Working Group” responsible for writing the UC new admissions requirement course criteria are proponents of the Liberated Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum Coalition (LESMC). In addition, the petitioners point out, if this proposal passes it will be a financial bonanza for LESMC, raising serious questions about the legitimacy of the UC approval process.

LESMC is the educational consulting group whose leaders drafted the initial ethnic studies curriculum that was roundly rejected by Governor Newsom, the State Board of Education, all Jewish communal organizations, and California’s Jewish Legislative Caucus, whose members warned that such a curriculum would “marginalize Jewish students and fuel hatred and discrimination against the Jewish community.” The State Board of Education later drafted a new curriculum that omitted all the antisemitic content, and a law was passed making ethnic studies a California high school graduation requirement.
MESA Partner Web Page Down as Schools Cut Ties Over Israel Boycott
A website listing institutional members of the Middle East Studies Association (MESA) linked to an error page as of Tuesday, days after another of its partners withdrew from the group to protest its academic boycott of Israel.

The page was live as recently as March 25, according to an archived version of the site, when it listed 45 “Institutional Members” that work with MESA, which promotes scholarly study of the Middle East.

The previous day, Brandeis University became the latest institution to sever ties with MESA over its vote last week to endorse the Palestinian-led boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israel. The Boston-area school said it dissociated from the group “as a matter of principle” and because of the threat BDS poses to academic freedom.

The apparent removal of the page listing MESA members was seized on by the AMCHA Initiative, an antisemitism watchdog that has called the BDS resolution “reprehensible and incredibly dangerous.”

“MESA removed their list of online institutional members,” the group tweeted on Monday, sharing an archived version of the page. “Maybe they got scared their egregious endorsement of academic BDS would cause many universities to revoke their institutional memberships. They are right, and it’s okay, it’s cached.”

MESA did not immediately respond to a request by The Algemeiner to clarify the page’s status and whether the change was linked to the exit of institutional members.
Former Miss Iraq Says Nelson Mandela’s Grandson Refuses ‘Dialogue’ Over Anti-Israel Stance
Former Miss Universe contestant Sarah Idan said on Tuesday that the grandson of the late civil rights activist and former South African President Nelson Mandela has so far declined her offer to speak with her during her visit to the country, to discuss his controversial views on Israel and the conflict in the Middle East.

“He saw my messages. I called on him to have the conversation twice! I guess it’s easier to start a war than to have the dialogue which can lead to peace,” the former Miss Iraq, 32, said on her Instagram Stories. She previously said on Instagram that she had invited Nkosi Zwelivelile “Mandla” Mandela — a member of South Africa’s parliament and an outspoken critic of Israel — to meet with her to speak about human rights and the Middle East.

Idan, who founded the human rights NGO Humanity Forward, is in South Africa to talk with students across the country about peace, human rights, Zionism and antisemitism, as well as gender-based violence and female empowerment. Her visit coincides with Israel Apartheid Week (IAW) taking place on college and university campuses in Africa from March 21-April 4.

The former beauty queen previously slammed Mandela when he called on Miss South Africa Lalela Mswane and all African countries to boycott the 2021 Miss Universe pageant, which was held in Eilat, Israel. The staunch supporter of the movement to boycott the Jewish state accused Israel of a “heinous occupation.”

“Israel is an apartheid state and we will continue to mobilize all freedom loving people of the world to boycott, divest and pass sanctions against the brutal apartheid regime,” he said at the time. “We must persist in isolating apartheid Israel in the same way that we isolated apartheid South Africa.”

Last year he supported a call by the South African government to revoke Israel’s observer status at the African Union. During a 2017 visit to Israel to meet with Palestinian leaders he called Israel “the worst apartheid regime,” while most recently, he cast Ukraine’s leaders as “neo-Nazis” allied with “apartheid Israel’s dogs of war.”
SSI: Palestinian Apartheid Week 2022

University of Bristol’s Appeal Panel upholds termination of David Miller’s employment
It has now been reported publicly that, last month, the University of Bristol’s Appeal Panel upheld the University’s decision last year to terminate the employment of David Miller, which took place one month after Campaign Against Antisemitism brought a lawsuit on behalf of current students against the institution, amidst an outcry from the Jewish community and its institutions.

Our legal case against the University concerned alleged unlawful harassment on the basis of Jewish ethnicity and Judaism, amounting to breaches of the Equality Act 2010, as well as breaches of contract. We launched proceedings in late August and the University swiftly realised that it was putting itself in legal jeopardy by sustaining Prof. Miller’s employment at the institution.

A number of brave students at the University stepped forward to act as complainants in the litigation. We also wish to thank Asserson Law Offices, led by senior partner Trevor Asserson, and barristers Derek Spitz of One Essex Court and Benjamin Gray of Littleton Chambers.

The lawsuit related to Prof. Miller’s speech on a Zoom webinar in February last year in which he said that the “Zionist Movement” is “the enemy” that must be engaged, that it is “the enemy of world peace,” and that those associated with Zionism, including Jewish students on Bristol campus, “must be directly targeted”. Taken together, the implication of Prof. Miller’s remarks is that all decent people who support “world peace” should view Bristol Jewish Society and the Union of Jewish Students, and Jewish people, including those who identify with those bodies, and the vast majority of Jewish students as an “enemy” that must be “directly targeted”.

He also said that interfaith work between Jewish and Muslim groups is “a trojan horse for normalising Zionism in the Muslim community”. He also claimed that Jewish students, by virtue of being Zionist, “encourage Islamophobia and anti-Arab racism”.


BBC East Midlands fails yet again in ‘Palestine Action’ report
Headlined “Arrests at pro-Palestinian Leicester drone factory protest” that report by Sonia Kataria of BBC East Midlands describes ‘Palestine Action’ merely as a “campaign group”, once again failing to provide the full range of information about the real aims of the group whose political stunts it repeatedly chooses to report.

The article closes with what appears to be a section partly copy/pasted from a previous related report that appeared in August 2021:
“The Leicester facility builds unmanned aerial vehicles that the protesters allege were used in the conflict between Israel and Hamas in Gaza.

A ceasefire was agreed on 21 May between Israel and the Palestinian militant group Hamas, with both claiming victory.

It came after 11 days of fighting, which left at least 255 people dead.

It culminated in clashes at al-Aqsa, a holy site revered by both Muslims and Jews.

After warning Israel to withdraw, Hamas began firing rockets, triggering retaliatory air strikes.”

Obviously in the ten months that have passed since ‘Operation Guardian of the Walls’, BBC East Midlands has not bothered to confirm or refute that allegation from “the protesters” which it has repeatedly uncritically amplified.

Clearly the claim that the “11 days of fighting…culminated in clashes at al-Aqsa” is misleading given that (as is clear in the previous report from which that sentence is apparently taken) those pre-planned “clashes” took place before the commencement of the “11 days of fighting” (during which terrorist groups fired some 4,400 rockets at civilian targets in Israel).

Clearly too the writer of this report is insufficiently familiar with the BBC’s style guide entry concerning Temple Mount, with the result being that readers are inaccurately informed that “al Aqsa” is “revered by…Jews”.
McGill Tribune Publishes Anti-Israel Editorial Defending “Palestine Solidarity Policy” Resolution
In an editorial published on March 29 entitled “The Palestine Solidarity Policy must stand,” the Editorial Board of The McGill Tribune newspaper defended a recent anti-Israel referendum held by McGill University’s student union, the Students Society of McGill University (SSMU).

The referendum called for, among other items, a boycott of companies associated with Israel’s alleged “settler-colonial apartheid,” and a pro-Palestinian public statement to be made by the SSMU every semester, coinciding with “Nakba Day,” the Arabic term for “catastrophe”, referring to Israel’s establishment in 1948.

Calling the March 21 vote a “historic win,” the editorial took issue with the subsequent backlash from McGill University’s administration, which condemned the vote and called for “remedial action” to be taken by the student union.

Importantly, the Tribune’s editorial was rife with half-truths and outright falsehoods.

First, despite breathlessly referring to the vote as a “historic win” with more than 71 percent of the vote, the referendum was voted in favour of by fewer than 2,300 students – representing a tiny percentage of the nearly 24,000 eligible electors at McGill University. More fundamentally, the editorial condemned the university administration’s public statement, and claimed it “effectively exacerbates existing on-campus tension.” This statement is simply beyond parody. To the degree that there are tensions on campus related to the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians, it is in no small part as a result of anti-Israel misinformation.

The editorial accused the university of characterizing “anti-Zionism as antisemitism,” and defended the right of the student union to be anti-Zionist. It may come as a surprise to the editors of The McGill Tribune, but Zionism is nothing more than the quest for self-determination among the Jewish people in their ancestral homeland. Therefore, referring to Israel’s independence as a “catastrophe,” as the SSMU referendum did, is not merely a critique of Israeli government policy, but a complete denial of the Jewish people’s right to live in self-determination in their own homeland.
Romanian minister demands probe into antisemitic newspaper
Romania’s Chairman of the Committee on Culture and Media Lucian Romascanu called for an investigation into a newspaper containing nationalist and antisemitic articles on Tuesday.

The national theater in Bucharest, the Romanian capital, hosted a show on Sunday which was led by Dan Puric, a pro-Russian director and actor.

“An antisemitic newspaper was put in the hands of the audience right in front of the interim general director of the TNB,” actor Mihai Calin wrote on his Facebook page.

Prior, the interim director of the National Theater, Mircea Rusu, had stated he will not help organize any events in support of Ukraine or that denounced Russia's invasion of Ukraine, stating that the Theater “does not do politics."

The newspaper contained antisemitic and anti-Romanian articles as well as a few conspiracy theories about Romania’s secret services. Puric, which led that night’s show, has not responded about the incident.

“The Theater management must investigate and, if need be, file a complaint with the police about the unauthorized distribution of a publication inside the institution,” Lucian Romascanu said. “No one in the Theater leadership was informed about this serious incident,” he wrote on his Facebook page.
When Will Antisemitism Be Taken Seriously?
Not only do many civil rights organizations ignore any focus on hate crime perpetrators, but they also shy away from confronting campus antisemitism that goes under the guise of anti-Zionism. Last year, the union that represents City University of New York (CUNY) faculty passed a resolution explicitly characterizing Israel as a state founded by "colonial" settlers that maintains power through "apartheid" policies. Not one CUNY college president publicly deplored these characterizations of Israel, even though they provided legitimacy for "anti-Zionists" to use them in their classes. Indeed, there are now student lawsuits against such classroom faculty behavior.

The antisemitic spike after the 2021 Israeli-Hamas conflict did force the CUNY administration to make a public statement. However, rather than pointing to the damaging faculty resolution, Chancellor Matos Rodriguez made sure to link it with Islamophobia and rightwing extremism:

The recent wave of antisemitic violence and bigotry in New York City and the nation is the latest manifestation of a climate of hate that has increasingly infected the country in recent years. It is a poison of xenophobia and intolerance that has targeted virtually every racial, religious and ethnic minority — from the Islamophobia that followed the attacks of 9/11 and still rears its ugly head today, to the despicable acts of violence against Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders (AAPI) during the pandemic. It has become intertwined with the extremist political violence we saw at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6. We continue to denounce this deplorable behavior and work against the hatred that feeds it.

When will civil rights organizations take antisemitic hate crimes as seriously as they do other hate crimes? When will they focus on the perpetrators of those crimes? Until there is a recentering of efforts, antisemitic acts will remain an uncomfortable fact of life that will be ignored whenever possible by those who are unwilling to look beyond rightwing extremist movements.
Convicted Terrorist Who Planned Attacks on Jewish Facilities Gets 15 Years for Selling Methamphetamine
Ahmed Binyamin Alasiri, 45, a.k.a. Kevin Lamar James, of Garden Grove in Orange County, California, was sentenced Monday to 188 months in federal prison for selling close to four pounds of methamphetamine while on supervised release following a 2009 terrorism conviction, the US Dept. of Justice reported.

Alasiri was on supervised release after completing a 16-year federal prison sentence for conspiring to levy war against the United States through terrorism. Alasiri’s co-conspirators committed numerous armed robberies of gas stations to raise money for attacks Alasari planned on US military operations and Israeli and Jewish facilities in Southern California. Alasiri completed his prison sentence in September 2019.

Alasiri pleaded guilty in October 2021 to one count of distribution of methamphetamine.

About one year after being released from prison and while serving a term of federal supervised release, Alasiri sold methamphetamine to a buyer on three occasions.

On July 24, 2020, Alasiri sold the buyer 430 grams of pure methamphetamine in exchange for $3,700. On August 6, 2020, Alasiri exchanged 435 grams of pure methamphetamine to the buyer for $3,700. On August 20, 2020, Alasiri distributed 877 grams of pure methamphetamine to the buyer in exchange for $7,400.

The total weight of the methamphetamine was approximately 1.7 kilograms (3.8 pounds).

Alasiri admitted in his plea agreement that he – not the buyer – first raised the topic of selling drugs, and that he had “family members who were drug traffickers and that he himself sold drugs to customers.”
6th century BCE Jerusalemite oenophiles had a taste for exotic vanilla-spice wine
Hi-tech residue analysis of 6th-century BCE jug sherds shows that ancient Jerusalem’s elite imported vanilla from southeast Asia to flavor their wine. The findings, published today in the prestigious peer-reviewed PLOS ONE journal, confirm theories that the Kingdom of Judah was connected to international trade routes at the end of the First Temple period.

Ongoing excavations in the City of David National Park have unearthed dozens of large, 30-liter pottery jugs that were smashed during the destruction of Jerusalem during the Babylonian conquest in 586 BCE.

The eight jars that were examined in the current research come from two loci. Some of the handles are decorated with the seal impression in the shape of a rosette, indicating the Kingdom of Judah’s royal administration.

Ayala Amir, a doctoral student in the Department of Archeology and Ancient Near Eastern Cultures at Tel Aviv University, headed the residue analysis research in the laboratories at the Weizmann Institute and Bar-Ilan University. Her field of expertise combines the disciplines of chemistry and archaeology.

“When I arrived at the excavation site and saw the ceramic sherds, I knew what a great opportunity this was to discover the content of the jars,” said Amir. Until recently, she said, we didn’t have the technology to unravel the residue.

“We didn’t have any idea what we’d find” before completing the molecular analysis of the sherds’ residue, she told The Times of Israel on Tuesday. “It was a riddle.”

After undergoing the chemical procedure, Amir was presented with a series of molecules, some indicating wine, others olive oil, and three molecules that are found in vanilla, including vanillin.

During this era, said Amir, vanilla was considered “very luxurious, very elite.”

The exotic spice was discovered in a “royal” Canaanite tomb dated to the later phase of the Middle Bronze Age (around 1700-1600 BCE) replete with gold jewelry during recent excavations at Megiddo in northern Israel. The research then indicated the vanilla was likely collected from South Asia vanilla orchid pods, showing that far-flung trade existed in the Bronze Age.


Stephen Shalom, American Sephardic philanthropist who promoted tolerance, dies at 93
Stephen Shalom, a leader of the U.S. Sephardic Jewish community who promoted Middle East peace and religious tolerance, died at 93.

Shalom died Sunday, his family said in a statement.

The heir to a handkerchief manufacture fortune, I. Shalom, now known as New York Accessory Group, Shalom was at different times in his life a leader of major Jewish and pro-Israel philanthropies. They included the United Jewish Appeal of Greater New York (now the UJA Federation of New York), the World Sephardi Federation and Israel Bonds. He was also involved with the American Jewish Committee; HIAS, the Jewish immigration advocacy group; the Jewish Agency, and the Joint Distribution Committee.

Shalom said the accomplishment of which he was most proud was working with Rep. Stephen Solarz, D-N.Y., with the blessing of President Jimmy Carter, to bring 400 Jewish women who wanted to marry within their faith to the United States from Syria in 1977.

Born in Brooklyn to parents who had immigrated from Aleppo, he regretted and resented the stereotype that had attached to Jews of Middle Eastern and Sephardic origin as being militant and intolerant of Arabs.

As Israeli governments turned to peace-making, he encouraged Sephardic leaders in Israel to join the efforts, in order to increase their influence in a country that once was dominated by Ashkenazi Jews, but also to roll back perceptions that Sephardim and Mizrahi Jews were anti-peace.

He encouraged his friend Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, Israel’s most influential Sephardic rabbi, to give his blessing to Middle East peace talks and helped establish the Tami Party, a Sephardic religious party that existed in the first half of the 1980s and that promoted religious moderation.

Shalom often said that the erroneous image of Mizhrahi Jews as being intolerant came because so many Sephardi communities were coopted by more rigid Ashekanzi sects in Israel as Mizrahi Jews fled their native lands.





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